you are wasting your time - the experts know best. The guard should be eliminated, if only to ensure another section of society doesn't have better pay and conditions than the experts section of society!
The railway does not exist to provide employment. The employment occurs as a beneficial side effect of what it is there for - the transport of passengers and freight.
To decide to retain guards for customer service purposes is a good reason. To decide to retain them for safety purposes is a good reason. To decide to retain them for political ends IMO is not - or not without a similar burden being imposed on all areas of all industries, or at least all subsidised industries.
Nice idea but it wont happen
The fines for not providing a guard? It's exactly how the Strathclyde manning agreement mentioned upthread works, I understand.
I disagree - It is much safer for a guard to have a drop light window so he can observe the train leave the station. The driver can see little backwards once he is past the DDO monitor
Yes, that is safest. But then the guard cannot viably do revenue on anything other than a 2-car set, because he can only dispatch from the back cab where such a droplight is provided. Passenger doors on modern stock do not have droplights for the rather more significant safety reason of passengers getting their heads knocked off and/or trapped when the door opens.
You could I suppose provide droplights opened with a T-key as I think is the case on the Class 442. However you'd have to retrofit that to all modern stock for that argument to stand.
As it is, on those grounds specifically, a DOO dispatch with the driver able to see right up to the point he starts the train moving is safer than a guard dispatch from an intermediate door where there is a period of around 5 seconds when the train has not yet started moving (the time between the local door closing and the driver applying power) - exactly the period when someone is most likely to run up to the train, start stabbing at door buttons - or fall under it.
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Are TOC's likely to use this as a way of reducing their costs? Yes, although given the public's desire to see staff perhaps not as much of a cost saving as it could be. Also, given staff on trains act as a revenue protection feature (i.e. if you know the guard always sits in the back cab or only briefly visits the rear portion of the train, if at all, before having to dash back to deal with doors then there is the risk that some people will take advantage of that) especially on services which call at lightly staffed and/or ungated stations.
I think it would change the staff requirement. For instance, a team of 3 relatively cheap security guards, even if without railway skills, may be of more use on a late-night Saturday express out of a big city than a diminutive guard sitting alone in the rear cab, scared to venture out. Whereas on a route with a lot of tourists, you might want to provide a couple of helpful, enthusiastic conductors to sell tickets and provide assistance as well as point out stuff to look at out of the window.
(At this point I probably shouldn't, but will, mention the DB rural guards who used to flog coffee, and the Prignitzer Eisenbahnen drivers who used to flog choccy bars as well!
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