Train and tube strikes

[uneffingbelievable]

I can not work from home and my job is fairly essential.

To get to work next week - I have now along with many of my colleagues had to:

1. Book a hotel on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights
2. Pay for parking at the station for 4 full days
3. Organise extra child care and a taxi to pick DCS up from school ( too far to walk and no bus)
4. Will have to pay to eat out for those days

If the rail unions had not noticed we are ALL facing a cost of living crisis - wasting the best part of £500 to get to work is not endearing me to your cause.

The alternative of drive in and out each day in the traffic and pay for parking in London and then walk miles comes in at around £350 and exceedingly high BP.

Your actions are selfish beyond belief and hurt the innocent hardworking majority.

That is the polite version - selfish beyond belief

All of these conferences and awards events seem to roll in to one, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know of any member of operating staff who goes.

I did go on holiday to Switzerland though, and saw plenty of things we ought to consider in rolling stock design. Things like having a small, card lined bin installed within every table. Strengthening trains on a whim, rather than praying that a two-car class 150 can cope with a few thousand racegoers. Having passcomms and call for aid activations display on the screens so that the guard knows instantly where the issue is. Most importantly of all, they've electrified their entire network. Not that management are interested in the views of those of us who actually run trains and deal with the public on a daily basis. No, they believe that a two car train on X route is entirely sufficient in spite of the fact that even the four car ones sometimes leave passengers behind. I'm not on about being forced by circumstances to make the best of what we've got with the existing fleet, I'm referring to a new order of rolling stock where as soon as it was announced as a mixture of two and three car trains, the messroom groaned.

We on the other hand are messing around trying to fit diesel engines to electric trains (with mixed results) because Chris Grayling is a numpty. The DfT were boasting about the money saved by cancelling the GWML wiring to Bristol and Oxford. Completely overlooking that as a result they'd had to pay far more than they saved in contract variations to Hitachi so that the latter could fit diesel engines.

@DdraigGoch I totally agree. Human nature. But you can't ask for change, and then reject it.

I'm more track based, and we could learn an awful lot from Europe - things like remote controlled TCODS. They are filtering slowly in to Uk use, but this is what I mean by people not wanting to accept things - despite the safety, time and cost benefits, they're still regarded with massive suspicion despite being all over Europe 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't think anyone quite knows what they're up to with diesel VS electric VS bastard hydrogen. I kinda wish someone would pick a bloody fuel and then we can all get on with making the necessary conversions! 😂

Frankly the DfT needs to stop dreaming about powering trains with bionic duckweed and it needs to start a rolling electrification programme. I can't stand the SNP but at least they've done one good thing, they've got a realistic plan to completely electrify all mainline in Scotland. Looks like I'll be able to catch an electric train to Inverness before I'll be able to catch one to bloody Bristol.

If people want to know why the UK railway is so expensive, here's part of the answer: we're still heavily reliant upon diesel trains. If you compare the subsidies required by each operator (pre-pamdemic) with the proportion of electrified services they operate, there is a pattern.