Your editorial (9 August) talks about train guards. But British Rail abolished guards on passenger trains many years ago, and changed the job to conductors. This difference in terminology is not pedantic, it is important. Guards used to share the responsibility for the safety of the train with drivers, and consequently guards had to have route knowledge – not just knowing about where stations were located, but locations of signals, signalboxes and an extensive knowledge of the rulebook. With the change to conductors the requirement for detailed route and rule knowledge was greatly diminished. The proposed change at the heart of the current Southern dispute is one more step along this road: from guard to conductor, and now from conductor to customer service agent. In the eyes of railwaymen and women, that this is one further step in diminishing responsibility. But railways are now very safe indeed as far as the technical business of trains and signalling are concerned; perhaps the greatest threat to the safety of a rail passenger is from another passenger, and it thus makes sense to change the conductor’s focus from the train to its passengers.
Ian Watson
Carlisle
• Coming back from West Dulwich to Victoria on 20 June, on a Southern train, I fell while getting on the 20.21 pm train by the door nearest the front of the train, and my legs went down the gap between the train and the platform edge. Luckily I didn’t go down any further but ended up sitting on the edge of the platform. The driver did not know I had fallen and shut the train doors and his own door, getting ready to depart. One of my bags was on the train and the other went onto the track. I yelled for someone to stop the driver from driving the train away and luckily a passenger who was leaving the train did.
I was responsible for falling, I was tired and misjudged the wide gap between the train and the platform edge, about which there were plenty of warnings. The issue for me is that the driver did not see I had fallen and had I been unable to pull my legs up, or gone down on to the track and he’d driven away, I would have lost my legs or been killed. Once he knew what had happened he was extremely helpful, making arrangements for someone to get my bag back and checking I was alright. There were no staff at the station, either in the ticket office or on the platform, and nor was there a guard on the train, leaving the driver solely responsible for safety. I emailed Southern, telling them what had happened to me, asking them whether they thought their safety procedures are adequate around passengers falling while getting on and off trains, because in this incident I didn’t think they were.
They said: “The rules and regulations governing the dispatching of trains from stations have progressively changed over the years. This has mainly come about as a result of changes in train design and technological advancement, but also in response to more stringent regulations … and we have extensively reviewed our dispatch arrangements in order to comply with these requirements. When a platform is manned at a station, platform staff and the train driver carry out the train dispatch procedure. If a platform is unmanned, it’s the responsibility of the train driver to carry out the procedure by using monitors and mirrors to check that the edge of the platform is clear before pulling away. In each instance, however, the train doors should never be closed and depart until the driver is sure that it’s safe to do so. At no time should passenger safety be compromised.” This is not a satisfactory reply!
Christine Stammers
London
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