A scenario: passenger approaches member of train crew (who is picking up the unit for the first time) at terminus station and says it's very cold on the train please turn on the heating. Member of train crew agrees and turns heating on (time of day fits in with company instructions for when heating should be on). Passenger thanks member of train crew and train starts it's journey. A few stations down the line the member of train crew is contacted by the signaller and told somebody on Twitter has complained it is too hot on the train and has requested the heating is turned off.
Member of train crew stuck in the middle between passenger who was too cold and passenger who tweeted they were too hot.
When member of train crew assessed the heat level on the train they now found it to be quite comfortable.
Should signallers, drivers and other members of staff really have to be contacted midway through a journey because one person on twitter has claimed it's too hot? Surely each persons idea of a comfortable temperature is different. This member of train crew was a little bit put out that an attempt to make one passenger happy resulted in another becoming unhappy.
Just wondering if others have had similar experiences and what they think about the whole Twitter thing.
I've never heard it happening where I am, I know we do get complaints come in about temperature on the trains, but would normally be passed to the depots for attention - assuming the complainant has given enough information to be able to identify the car concerned.
Certainly where I am, there's little the driver can do. The trains I work with have a switch in the cab which can be used to switch off all heat & vent on the entire train. Unlikely to be used for people complaining about being too hot as the heaters are pretty useless anyway - although you can notice which cars don't have any heat working if walking through the train!
We get a message on the in-cab TMS if there's a heat or vent fault in a given car, but there's nothing the driver can actually do about it apart from switch the aforementioned switch to the off position for a couple of minutes and then back on, this sometimes clears the message. Generally I'd expect the message to come up if the system is defective and off, not for (say) a defective thermostat causing the heating to be stuck on. Wouldn't generally touch the switch in response to a passenger's request, not that I've ever known it, the only other time I'd touch the switch is if there's a burning smell coming from the brake resistors to try and avoid the smell getting into the cars, or occasionally (on a mild day) if a fancy peace & quiet and already have the cab heating/air conditioning off - it's surprising what a difference this makes to sound levels within the cab.
Generally what goes on behind the cab bulkhead is the passengers' problem, my view is that's their area and as long as the train gets safely from A to B then I'm not overly bothered what's going on. I would add that this is on a DOO service, I would expect more attention to passenger comfort on a crew-operated service.