Is the 'Railway Family' a thing of the past?

[Deepgreen]

Anyone who starts a post (or spoken sentence) with the now-fashionable; "So...", when it should be used only when following an previous statement, deserves all they get - OP! As with similar modern and annoyingly pointless tweaks of the English language; "We are now arriving into...", etc, etc.

However, old fogey anti-language mangling rant aside - no - the 'family' is still strong. My GWR train pulls into Reigate in the mornings and the driver often stops alongside the adjacent Southern train to chat with its driver. However, at Redhill, the Southern staff wear virtual blinkers when it comes to maintaining connections between the two, so there are glaring exceptions. I receive nothing but friendly 'family'-style responses from other TOCs' conductors etc., when I show my pass.

 

[AlterEgo]

I have traveled far and wide priv in hand and have found certain toc's staff treat you as a colleague and others treat you like a hindrance. I always ask to buy a priv from the conductor before boarding the train and i'm more often then not told "you're fine mate, jump on" sometimes even in 1st. The rest they say "Yeah sure mate, I'll come down and find you." There is still a strong sense of community between toc's staff who know that they stand equal to any other train operator regardless of the services they provide. I have personally found intercity operators going to/from London to love themselves a bit too much and feel as though they are better then the rest because they have faster trains, although this does vary based on depot.

This was certainly my experience when I had my Priv.

It's interesting just being an ordinary member of the public these days. It's much easier to see the negative aspects of the railway (especially when commuting with SWT!).

 

[Antman]

Lets just say this, someone I know (a lifelong railwayman) was taken ill and finished up in hospital a couple of hundred miles from home. His wife who doesn't drive was stuck with him without her passes. 3 TOC's pulled together to get her home safely after one phone call.

Wouldn't most good employers do something like that?

 

[Clip]

Wouldn't most good employers do something like that?

They are talking about 3 seperate companies though not just 1.

 

[bearhugger]

From what i've seen as a station adopter over the last 8 or so years is that most drivers and guards at Northern and the occasional staff i meet at TPE treat each other like family and myself too as most of them now know i look out for them while i'm travelling by train.

 

[6Gman]

Have to say that staff are always very kind when they see my (Retired Staff) Priv Card - to the point that, on two occasions, they have declined to sell me a (required) ticket.



On both occasions I insisted, to protect both them and myself.

And today, on Northern, presented our tickets, then our supporting priv cards and got a :

"Ah, you'd have been alright"

which I took to mean he'd have been content for us to travel ticketless.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Drivers have always has a separate union, Aslef, which tends to imply a little bit of "we (drivers) are slightly different to the "average" railway employee." Apart from that I've no doubt that the break up of BR has probably been detrimental to the concept of a railway family in particular the separation of infrastructure operation from train operation and in the case of the latter the creation of separate often competing companies - all this in the name of Tory dogma

At a very early stage of my railway career I was introduced to the following ditty :-

The guard is a man
Who rides in the van
At the back of a long, long train.
The man at the front
Thinks the guard is a ****
And the guard thinks the driver's the same.

 

[sprinterguy]

And today, on Northern, presented our tickets, then our supporting priv cards and got a :

"Ah, you'd have been alright"

which I took to mean he'd have been content for us to travel ticketless.

Before the Northern franchise was brought into the same fold as the TOC I work for, I also found their guards to generally be the most accommodating in this regard.

At a very early stage of my railway career I was introduced to the following ditty :-

The guard is a man
Who rides in the van
At the back of a long, long train.
The man at the front
Thinks the guard is a ****
And the guard thinks the driver's the same.

Still gets recited down the pub occasionally, even though the days of guards' vans on the rear of trains have long since passed us by!

There's also the "Eight Freight Blues", written by Dave Goulder, which described the schisms between engine driver and fireman in the latter days of BR steam:

Across the cab the driver sits and he's staring straight ahead
He's not spoken to me for eighteen months
since I started out of the shed
He's drawn a line across the cab for each of us to stand
Since he found I'd joined the NUR while he was a ASLEF man

 

[Kneedown]

Whilst there are the odd members of staff who, because they work for an IC operator, seem to think they are in some way superior, I find they are very much in the minority, and very rarely ex BR, mostly joining the industry post privatisation.
In my personal experience the family is still mostly intact.
I'm ex Central and the Mrs is ex MML and we get along just fine!