Guard eats Sandwich

[JamieLei]

Commuters forced to wait 60 minutes for train to depart because guard was eating sandwich

While the story is another piece of sensationalist reporting, it was the paragraph near the end that I found interesting:

"She said that once on the train - which takes 30 minutes to get from Ashford to Maidstone - nobody came round to check their tickets, meaning the guard was 'redundant'."

The main purpose of the guard is not the check tickets, and that comes secondary. Of course, that's what passengers see the guard doing and that's what they assume they do.

[MjD]

To be fair the station staff didn't really help the matter by saying he was having his dinner, if he/she had said they were on a PNB which is mandatory for safety reasons then I'm sure it wouldn't of made the papers.

I'm sure what a lot of travellers don't realise is that if a guard/drivers don't take their minimum break then if something happens (e.g someone being dragged under the train by the doors) then the guard/driver then would get charged by police, its similar to truck drivers and their tachograph.

As someone who used to be a guard it is easy to get into the lazy mentality, but as you pointed out the main purpose of a guard is safety, commercial duties are secondary.

MjD

[GurraJG]

And the poor scheduling by the company didn't help either. Surely they'd have known he was having his break then and should've scheduled another guard onto that particular service.

[teccuk]

This is ridiculous, I would have been equally as angry if i'd been one of the passengers. It deserves to be a story if not just to embarrass the TOC into making sure this doesn't happen again. Unfortunate that the passengers blamed the front line staff, but what else would you expect?

[Badger]

And the poor scheduling by the company didn't help either. Surely they'd have known he was having his break then and should've scheduled another guard onto that particular service.

Staff sickness, someone was a no-show, staff misplaced by other late running trains? Plenty of reasons why finding another conductor was not possible.

[PikkaBird]

And the poor scheduling by the company didn't help either. Surely they'd have known he was having his break then and should've scheduled another guard onto that particular service.

You'd think if it were a scheduling problem that it would happen every single day, wouldn't you?

[GurraJG]

And the poor scheduling by the company didn't help either. Surely they'd have known he was having his break then and should've scheduled another guard onto that particular service.

Staff sickness, someone was a no-show, staff misplaced by other late running trains? Plenty of reasons why finding another conductor was not possible.

I suppose. Still, you can understand why the customers where upset.

[supermop]

When I saw the title of this thread, I was hoping to see some railfan type video linked of a train guard eating a sandwich.

Do you have trainspotters for train crew? With favorite rare and restored uniforms?

[JamieLei]

There's certainly 'spotter spotting' that drivers do!