Hooray for X Country Trains

[pirouets]

So there I was, needing to take a day trip to one of our offices near the glory that iS Manchester Airport. Luckily from Reading this is easy, so I booked my ticket on line, reserved my seats etc.

 

I got up as required, caught the 6:11 to Manchester, and then the connection to the airport.

 

The day went smoothly and I set of for home, this time going from the Airport to Crewe and getting my connection which arrived and I boarded.

 

I went to my seat which showed something other than my reservation, but on the otherside of the isle was an un-occupied Crewe to Reading seat, so I grabbed that and assumed something on the website had gone wrong. I settled in with a bit of work, and after a while moved to watch a West Wing DVD.

 

That regular cry then went up of "Tickets Please" and I dug out my wallet. I handed my tickets over, and then started to to wonder why the inspector had a confused look on her face. She asked me "Do you plan to do this journey a lot this week?" to which I answered no, and she handed me my ticket and pointed out I was booked on the 18:07 from Crewe to reading on the 10th. (the next day)

 

My mind raced to all those stories of jobsworth who enforce the regulations. I was thinking of the on recently where a gentlemen got of 1 stop sooner than planned and got charged for breaking his journey. Fully expecting to be hit by 98,000 pages of ticket regulations I wimpered, "I must have messed up my booking on the web"

 

At this point the inspector turned in to an Angel and simply changed the date of the ticket by pen, and signed it. Worried about the change of inspector that happens at Birmingham the journey continued, BUT NO, he to simply added to the glory of my stupidity by saying, make sure you explain this clearly to the gate staff at Reading

 

So all I can say is 3 cheers for X Country trains and their staff.

 

As a footnote to this, there is a stupid slider on the website that I have always hated, but that is for your departure/arrival time and not the date so it is pure user error.

[John M Upton]

Very pleased to see this I must say. There is an important tool in us Conductor's armoury which is not taught in any rules or commercial course, that tool is a word, that word is DISCRETION. We (well most of us) realise that many of us are only human, people do make honest genuine mistakes and where necessary we will use common sense, a quiet word and discretion.

 

We can always tell those who are genuine as in your case, we can by the same token always tell those who are trying it on and deliberately pulling a fast one so I always say that if it is a genuine mistake, don't panic. If really worried come and see the Conductor (where available) straight away and explain the situation, we are not all monsters!!

[definate maybe]

To be fair I think most are fine and sensible when it comes to silly/ honest mistakes. You didnt try to fare dodge or cheat in any other way so in reality there was no harm done. Unfortunately the 5% who are complete %&(*()_'s ruin the names of the 95% with common sense and compassion and its these few that always make the headlines. It the same in most jobs I suppose, you dont get praise for doing your job right but the mistakes are broadcast everywhere so its nice to see the roles reversed

[great central]

Very pleased to see this I must say. There is an important tool in us Conductor's armoury which is not taught in any rules or commercial course, that tool is a word, that word is DISCRETION. We (well most of us) realise that many of us are only human, people do make honest genuine mistakes and where necessary we will use common sense, a quiet word and discretion.

 

We can always tell those who are genuine as in your case, we can by the same token always tell those who are trying it on and deliberately pulling a fast one so I always say that if it is a genuine mistake, don't panic. If really worried come and see the Conductor (where available) straight away and explain the situation, we are not all monsters!!

 

Very true and most of us think the same, however we do have one pedantic so and so at our depot, even wanted to cahrge someone extra for being off-route because they got on the wrong train!

On the other side of the coin I had my discretion tested last week. Leaving Norwich I ask 'young person' for their railcard. After a bit of scratching around and showing me several other plastic cards, including his 'student card' for university, he concludes he must have forgotten it, quel surprise!

Anyhow, putting on my 'jobsworth hat' I look up the standard single fare to his destination, £103.00!!! OUCH!

His advance Y-P ticket has cost him £24 something. Removing my (metaphorical) jobsworth hat I offer him a get out. 'When you cange trains at Peterborough, go and buy a new Y-P card' and proceed to write a note on the back of his ticket to that effect.

Then after having had a 'b*g rider' removed by BTP at Peterborough, youth asks me if the Aberdeen train calls at his station and then says he'll just buy a ticket from Peterborough, costing about £80. Methinks he won't, he'll try the same routine on the next guard, Grrr. So ask to see his ticket again, take it quickly from him, rip it up and stuff it in my pocket! Now you won't be trying that again will you?

Anyhow, glad you got a good 'un pirouets

[Les Bird]

I travel fairly frequently by train using Northern Rail, Cross Country, East Coast, First Transpennine and occasionally Virgin. I have to say that the odd jobsworth types I have encountered have been hugely outnumbered by the more helpful types.

[great central]

Thats a nice tale of a sensible attitude from an "inter city" guard, seems to be all to rare these days. Ex Regional Railways nearly always have a better attitude to such situations in my experience, though they are lots worse if you do cross them

 

Perhaps because we have more stops to 'ask them to leave the train' at :lol:

A colleague asked someone with no ticket or money but a serious 'attitude' to leave their train at a wayside station on a Sunday, next train to stop was Monday morning

[Bernard Lamb]

On First Capital Connect a few weeks ago I over heard an interesting conversation. A young chap who had to quote the PC phrase' learning difficulties' was telling the Ticket Inspector of a problem that he had encountered on his previous journey that day. He could not get the correct ticket from the machine, to benefit from his discount card, as the ticket office was not staffed early in the morning. He boarded the train with the intention of paying when the Ticket Inspector came round. He was charged a penalty fare by this jobsworth. The Ticket Collector on my train was not amused.He knew that you could not buy a ticket in the morning. He was aware that trying to explain to the chap that you needed to buy a ticket of some sort, even if it was not to where you wanted to go, was impossible. He wrote out the information needed to make an appeal against the penalty fare and instructed the chap to give these notes to some body who would help him fill in the form. It must have taken the Ticket Inspector a good ten minutes to do this.

Bernard

[Guest Phil]

Hi Pirouets.

 

From the information you have given, I think I can work out who the staff involved were, and I'll pass on your "bouquet". Our customer service staff don't receive as many "bouquets" as "brickbats" so a little praise goes a long way !!!

 

As has been said by others on here, discretion is a very important item in the "guard's" toolbox.

[Captain Kernow]

I'll echo what Phil says - from my experience the XC train managers that I know are generally sensible, helpful people.

[Moo]

I'd like to think most of us Guards/TM's/Senior Con's etc are!!!!

 

It's certainly easier and less stressful to use discretion in genuine cases rather than charge folks upto the max in genuine cases! The 0927 MAN-BMH is a good example as it leaves 3 mins before the peak ends! But is off-peak from Stockport just a few mins along the line! You hear af ew tails of excess fare shenannigans going on on that one!

 

However, if it's your usual fare dodger, then expect the full force of Excess, Std opens or Unpaid Fare Notices to come into force!

 

On the jobs-worth front, I've known a TM delay a train for 6-7mins for a £2.80 Man-Spt fare.............crazy!!!!

 

 

[Fat Controller]

I'd like to think most of us Guards/TM's/Senior Con's etc are!!!!

 

It's certainly easier and less stressful to use discretion in genuine cases rather than charge folks upto the max in genuine cases! The 0927 MAN-BMH is a good example as it leaves 3 mins before the peak ends! But is off-peak from Stockport just a few mins along the line! You hear af ew tails of excess fare shenannigans going on on that one!

 

However, if it's your usual fare dodger, then expect the full force of Excess, Std opens or Unpaid Fare Notices to come into force!

 

On the jobs-worth front, I've known a TM delay a train for 6-7mins for a £2.80 Man-Spt fare.............crazy!!!!

I'd like to see how his/her bosses justified that at the daily Delay Attribution meeting- it would have cost them at least tens of times more than that if there were consequential delays for other operators.

[BR60103]

On the jobs-worth front, I've known a TM delay a train for 6-7mins for a £2.80 Man-Spt fare.............crazy!!!!

 

Sounds like Bob Newhart's theory of accounting (or his explanation of why he's no longer an accountant) that if he got within 2 or 3 dollars he was OK and it wasn't worth spending another 2 hours to trace it.

[JZ]

Discretion is a useful tool in our job and we can tell by the body language whether it's someone trying it on. Couple of months back I was on the 10:23 Portsmouth Harbour-Cardiff Central on the Monday after the Isle of Wight Festival. I had people coming up asking if they could use booked tickets on my train as much as 8 hours early. I had to decline them as I knew this service would be rammed today, another day and I would possibly say OK. I made an announcement to the effect that if you had bookings for ather than this train, could you please leave the train now as we are expecting high passenger numbers today. Any passengers travelling with a booking for other than this train would be charged for standard single journeys to their destination station and no railcard discounts would be given. Around 50 got off. The first ticket I checked was for the 09:23. Before I had a chance to say anything, he told me he couldn't be bothered to catch the earlier train and wanted to use it on this one. Sorry that will be £42 please. Into the next carriage a couple again for the 09:23. "We are really sorry, but the ferry was too crowded to get on, so we missed our train." "That's OK. I can understand that. Hope you enjoyed the festival." And on I went. I only found one chap with a ticket for a later train and after a polite exchange, he left the train at Southampton to wait for his booked train. It's all a question of attitude.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

I'll echo what Phil says - from my experience the XC train managers that I know are generally sensible, helpful people.

 

 

 

An excellent example on my way back from 'ull yesterday. Some delightful child (who should have known better) travelling with her mother and another woman (both of whom should have known a lot better) split sherbert or something like it all over the floor. The Guard gave them a right rollicking (very politely) and did his best to clear up the mess - I was very impressed with his attitude and manners in the way he dealt with them (but i don't think they were).

 

 

[Oldddudders]

I don't envy conductors or other revenue-protection staff their job, that's certain. Perhaps I made the job a little easier for some of them when I installed ticket gates, perhaps again when I was part of the team that developed & procured the current portable ticket-issuing kit. I hope so, although I think that even then, a decade ago, the railway was less busy than now, so I hope the kit is still fit for purpose. I assume that the IBM Microdrive, which was the clinching part of the successful supplier's proposal, has now been replaced with other solid-state media with infinitely greater capacity.

 

What bothers me most is the idea that Portsmouth-Cardiff trains require reservations at all. I assume this started after the route went from loco-hauled to DEMU & DMMU? Being from a Southern suburban backgound, reservations have always been anathema to me. Buy your ticket, join the train - deal. Lots more rolling stock needed, no doubt!

[ste234]

A few month back my morning train to college didn't turn up, so my Grandad dropped me off at the college. As the station I get on at is unmanned, I didn't have the usual return ticket that day.

On the afternoon, we finished college at 16:10, rather than 16:00, with the train due at 16:15, so I had to run for the train, arrived on the station to find the train about to go,so I jumped straight on.

Bearing in mind I normally have my ticket, my face must have been a picture when I realised I didn't have a ticket, although this station was manned.

The guard came along in due time, I explained what had happened on the morning, and I had clearly rushed to catch the train as I was breathing heavily.

He just said "well make sure it doesn't happen again" as though the train not turning up on the morning was my fault

I still got home OK though

This wasn't XC by the way

[Guest Phil]

Hi Pirouets.

 

From the information you have given, I think I can work out who the staff involved were, and I'll pass on your "bouquet". Our customer service staff don't receive as many "bouquets" as "brickbats" so a little praise goes a long way !!!

 

As has been said by others on here, discretion is a very important item in the "guard's" toolbox.

 

 

I've worked out who the TMs were and passed the praise onto the Bournemouth guy.

Unfortunately, the Birmingham lady is not at work at the moment, but I'll pass on when I speak to her next.

[pirouets]

Thanks Phil.