A Great Western Railway train guard left disabled comedian Tanyalee Davis feeling “humiliated and embarrassed” after he tried to get her to move her mobility scooter for a mother and her child.
The incident escalated into a row that saw him threaten to call the police and announce over the train intercom that “it was the woman with the mobility scooter who was causing the problems.”
Davis, who was travelling between Plymouth and London Paddington on the morning of 16 July, had put her scooter in the only disabled space on the service.
When a mother and her baby joined the train at Taunton, both she and the guard asked Davis to move her scooter, insisting that the space was theirs.
After the discussion escalated, the guard told Davis that he would call the police and that the train would be stopped due to her resistance to moving. The guard then made an announcement over the train tannoy saying that it was “the woman with the mobility scooter causing the problems” and that they would be “delayed indefinitely.”
Davis relayed the nightmare journey in a tearful video posted on YouTube, stating that the experience was “humiliating” and “embarrassing” and that she cried most of the way home.
GWR told The Independent: “No one travelling with us should be left feeling like this. This should not have happened, and we have made contact with Tanyalee so we can look into this further.
In an earlier and unrelated Twitter exchange, GWR stated that a parent travelling with a pushchair would be required to fold this up.
Davis has a form of dwarfism called diastrophic dysplasia and is 3ft 6in tall, and requires a mobility scooter for travelling long distances.
