Are Weekend Trains a Rip-Off? A Train Driver Tells the Truth

Are weekend trains in Sussex and Surrey actually fit for purpose—or are passengers being short-changed? In this lively roundtable, a train driver pulls back the curtain on why weekend rail travel feels so broken.

10 key aspects we tackle:

1. Why weekends feel worse than weekdays
   Delays, cancellations, diversions, overcrowding—listeners’ lived experience clashes with “acceptable” official stats.
2. The engineering works problem
   Weekend closures are constant, but poor coordination turns necessary maintenance into total network chaos.
3. Staffing myths vs reality
   It’s not drivers “pulling sickies”—Sunday working contracts and rostering rules leave services fragile.
4. A fragmented rail system
   Too many companies, too many silos—operators, Network Rail, leasing firms and contractors all passing the buck.
5. Fares that feel like a rip-off
   UK rail tickets are expensive and painfully complex, leaving passengers confused and overpaying.
6. Victorian infrastructure in a modern world
   Outdated tunnels, ageing signalling and underinvestment make the system fragile—and weekends pay the price.
7. Will renationalisation fix anything?
   Great British Railways promises joined-up thinking, but nationalisation alone isn’t a magic wand.
8. Automation vs human presence
   Driverless trains might be efficient—but what about safety, reassurance, and antisocial behaviour onboard?
9. The reality of being a train driver
   Extreme shift work, high responsibility, health impacts—and why drivers defend their pay and conditions.
10. What would actually make trains better
    Longer turnarounds, smarter planning around major events, real coordination between companies, and putting passengers first.

Bottom line: Weekend trains aren’t failing by accident—they’re the product of a complex, underfunded, poorly joined-up system. The question is whether the next phase of rail reform starts to fix it… or just rebrands the problem.

Roundtable Featuring: Stephen Pritchard (Train Driver), Georgie Lucas, Iqbal Khan, Aga Es, Jacq Inwood, James Tidy and Maureen Jones. Host: Clive Hilton. 

Please click on 'Send a text' above & join our Facebook group to share your perspective and suggestions for future topics - Thank you for your interest! Clive.

Transcript

Setting The Weekend Rail Problem

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Sussex and Surrey Soapbox. Real viewpoints, real opinions, and a balanced conversation on the community issues that matter.

SPEAKER_05 0:09

Sussex and Surrey Soapbox, and we're back now talking about trains, particularly at the weekend. Do we feel the delays, the cancellations, the overcrowdedness? Is it value for money?

Personal Stories Of Cancellations

SPEAKER_01 0:21

So I have a daughter who lives in London and comes home at weekends to uh to visit. Um and more often than not, uh her train is cancelled, delayed, diverted. She's ending up going to different places that I have to pick her up from. Um the service at the weekends particularly is just shocking at the moment. And I don't know whether it's due to weather, whether it's due to staff illness. Um I was talking to a a client of mine a while ago whose husband is uh uh trains train drivers or teaches train drivers or whatever you do. And he said one of the issues that he's finding is that a lot of people just don't report for work. So at the weekend there's a shortage of staff. Now, I don't know whether that's actually factually correct correct or not, but I do know that at the weekends, whether it's because of planned uh engineering works or weather or or whatever, the trains are appalling. And I it's not just short term. This has been going on now for months.

SPEAKER_05 1:19

And it's interesting because doing the research for this, if we look at stats across the area, uh it doesn't look too bad, uh, but it doesn't pull out the weekends. That's the trouble. Um, it is a public performance measure, PPM, which no doubt Stephen being a train driver will know about. And it varies, right? Uh Thames Link 92.6%, 82% for Southern Coastway, Gatwick Express 81.9%, overall network 86.2%, which is basically two services getting cancelled out of every hundred planned, which doesn't sound that bad. But Stephen, do you think it is worse at the weekend? It is what George is feeling.

Is It Worse On Weekends

SPEAKER_04 1:54

The the service the railway provides to passengers is not good enough. I'm not going to defend my industry here. It's it's unacceptable. There are a number of factors to it. I do take issue with the the people not turning up for work. Um nearly all of the train operators in the UK, apart from two, drivers are required to work on Sundays. On two of them, Sundays are optional, one of which works in our area, unfortunately. Uh, and therefore it's entirely optional whether they work on a Sunday. Uh the government wishes to bring Sundays as part of the working week. Uh, my employer, Southern, doesn't have it as part of the working week, but it is mandatory if you're rostered to work the Sunday, you have to work it.

SPEAKER_05 2:38

But but I mean, you know the other drivers. Would you say if you're rostered to work, how many people pull a sickey?

Sunday Working And Staffing Reality

SPEAKER_04 2:45

No, no, it's that is that we're not talking pulling a sickey here. It's telling the company I'm not working next Sunday, and the company then not being able to find a driver that's willing to work next Sunday. So it's not just not turning up, okay. Uh it's not pulling a sickey, it's the the structure of those contracts, they're not required to work.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

But what I see is that weekends, for obvious reasons, are the target times for any maintenance works. And if you don't travel on the weekends, that's obviously fine, you don't care. But if you do, God forbid you do, because most of the time you're cooked. Every now and again, when I go to see uh some of my friends up in London, I have to be very mindful of how I get back or when I get back, because if I don't, I may not be getting back uh at all.

Engineering Works And Poor Coordination

SPEAKER_04 3:36

We we also have um uh an issue with planning for engineering works. Engineering works affects the the main line through the Brighton mainline through three bridges uh on a regular basis. And there doesn't seem to be a massive joined-up thinking approach to it. Not only do I I drive trains, but I also travel on them to and from work. And uh a couple of weeks ago I had uh an incident where I got the bus over from Three Bridges to East Gwinstead because the main line was closed, and the there were I counted 25 rail replacement buses parked at Three Bridges Station waiting to go. And when I got to the front of the queue, they said, Oh, the bus hasn't turned up yet. So we waited 25 with drivers all sat in them and all of the other buses until the one that you need. When we got to East Grinstead station, I made sure I was the front of the bus and they dispatched the train as we were getting off the bus, and passengers that travelled with me were half an hour late. Wow. That is not joined up thinking.

SPEAKER_05 4:40

That is not no pragmatism, but also you're a man, a Labor man, Stephen Pritchard. If you're in charge of this train network, where do you think they're going wrong? What what changes would you make?

Fragmentation And Blame Culture

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Right, I think we are taking the the right steps, very popular to renationalise the railway across politics in the south of England, uh, including uh very many conservative voters, and let's not forget it was the conservatives that fragmented it and sold it off. We don't have a joined up system, we have multiple companies, each with their own competing interests, each arguing with each other over um track access and which train runs first and uh who to blame for the delay because delay attribution is a major problem. And who are the people?

SPEAKER_05 5:26

You got network rail that own the image.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

So you've got network rail owns everything physical apart from the trains, they are owned by rolling stock leasing companies, so they're leased to the train operators, and then you have the train operators, so you have um go via Thameslink Railway, which runs Southern, Garwick Express, Great Northern, and Thameslink. And you then have the freight operators, then you have a myriad load of maintenance companies that do maintenance on the rails. You've got a massively complex system with multiple companies, all of which seek to pass the blame to others rather than take the passenger from where they want to go to where they're going to. Another part of this topic is fares, which is they're they're huge, they're absurd. I mean, I get free travel, I don't pay train fares, and occasionally I see a train fur and it shocks me every time.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

A lot more than any other country in Europe, Judge, I'm aware of.

Fares Shock And Value Question

SPEAKER_05 6:17

So so we'll come back to the weekend, uh, the piece that George's noticed for her daughter, where particularly at the weekends it it's bad, and you agree with that. Um, for me, there's two things that come to mind. One is you see on the notice boards where it says the doors were closed 30 seconds before departure, but even based on these stats, it's only within five minutes. Uh, we're not into the seconds timing. And I just find it funny more often than not when it says the doors are going to close 30 seconds before department. That's slightly changed now. It's 40 seconds. Okay, they've added 10 seconds of brilliant. Uh and the other thing is, you know, you look across the continent and here you get adverse weather conditions.

Victorian Infrastructure And Failing Signals

SPEAKER_04 6:58

I mean This is where I will come in to a little bit and defend our railways in that um Europe had the um benefit of the Second World War for their railways in that it obliterated them and they were rebuilt from scratch. We are working with a Victorian-built railway system. So we are on Victorian-built structures, and we have got uh vastly outdated signalling that should have been replaced many years ago, but is still soldiering on because the the general public want their tax cuts rather than investing in the infrastructure that we have, and that's a massive issue. We've got signalling through the whole of the Brighton mainline that it dates back to 1983, and it keeps it keeps failing, and that needs fixing, and that's that would make us more reliable, and that would make us but the Victorian infrastructure, only a couple of weeks ago we had a massive landslip between Dorking and Horsham because the the maintenance over years has been cut back and cut back and cut cut back and now it's falling apart. And when something major like that happens, it's not a quick fix, it's a massive fix.

SPEAKER_06 8:05

So are the trains uh in England are they privatised or are they nationalised? Currently in the process of being renationalised. So they're they're a private company.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Go go via Termslink Railway, which is the operator on all services around here, is currently privately owned. Uh in May becomes publicly owned.

SPEAKER_06 8:24

So you believe the delays are due to it's it's no one wants to spend money.

SPEAKER_05 8:29

What's really strange though is there's another example of short-term thinking, investment, you know, other countries have railways. I I don't know, being British, we invented the railway. We did. And yet we haven't sort of, you know, if you look over in the Netherlands, they have the double decker trains, you can't even feel the train move. And you think they've done it slightly better.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

You're going back there to your Victorian infrastructure because uh our whole That's no surprise, it's Victorian. The holes we've dug through hills are only big enough for single-decker trains, unfortunately, and it would cost a lot of money to re-dig the tunnels.

Renationalisation And Great British Railways

SPEAKER_00 9:05

People may argue that there isn't much investment in travel, but uh in train travel and in trains as such, but I uh I can't say that about docking until very recently. The train I'm usually taking was the worst of the worst. It was the epitome of cattle class. Uh, no air conditioning, no facilities, as in toilets, windows either wouldn't open or wouldn't close. And quite recently, I believe that was late last year, uh rollout and uh into the early uh early days of 2026, they got us some new trains, uh, much better, comfortable um with air conditioning and with toilets, uh, which is great for a stopping service. So I can't I can't say I don't see any investment. Uh, but again, we are paying exorbitant fares.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

We will have in the next 18 months or so the launch of Great British Railways. Nobody knows what that's going to look like yet. Not even the government. It's not also.

SPEAKER_05 10:09

Well, they've done the brand, haven't they? They they they came up with a new photo, so we're we're getting closer. That must have cost us 30 billion.

HS2 Cuts And Mixed London Examples

SPEAKER_04 10:16

But there is there is a lot of efficiencies able to be made from that, and hopefully, we don't have a penny pinch in government that will keep those efficiencies back and will invest as necessary in the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_06 10:30

Because I believe they were trying to do a train from the south all the way to the north, and what happened with that? They spent billions.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Are we talking uh high speed?

SPEAKER_06 10:43

That in power. Yeah, that's that's guaranteed.

SPEAKER_04 10:45

The previous government uh opted to host their uh their national conference in Manchester and announce in Manchester that they were cancelling the Manchester leg of HS2. To be honest, we can't take responsibility for the predecessors.

SPEAKER_05 11:01

And and and I have to say, it's not always a bad story. The Elizabeth line in London is an absolute pleasure. So we have to celebrate that.

Ticket Machines Vs Human Advice

SPEAKER_00 11:10

The two times when I had to take Elizabeth line, and mind you, I was in a hurry, I was running very, very late. The line was delayed. So I've I've either missed my meeting or was horribly late to where I needed to go. Um, and that's not only my experience because whoever I ask about the Lizzie line only complains. So people don't really have a lot, at least people I I talk to get.

SPEAKER_05 11:37

But Georgie, any words here of consolation to your daughter who suffers every weekend?

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Well, no, but I've just got one other question actually. When I get on the platform at my station and I buy my ticket on the with the machine, um, I end up paying significantly more than if I get onto the train and speak to the train conductor. Because there's always some sort of I don't know, you're traveling at a certain time of the day and it's cheaper than, or you're travelling as a group of three and it's cheaper than. My worry is that I won't buy one on this on the platform because it it costs more. So I'll wait till I get on the train and then I'm worried that if the the the conductor doesn't long, I'm gonna get a fine. But every time if I buy from the conductor, it's cheaper. For some reason, there's some deal.

Contactless Rollout And European Lessons

SPEAKER_04 12:19

Again, this this is a long-standing problem for our industry. Our fare structure is Is that true? That's absolutely true. So if I jump on a No, no, if she worked hard and if she had a degree in uh in tick train tickets, she would get the same fare out of that machine. But you have to have such an esoteric knowledge of which specific fare is the cheapest that we spend six months training our ticket office staff how to find that fare. And don't spend six months training our passengers to find that.

SPEAKER_05 12:51

Coming back to the Netherlands, why don't we learn from the continent? It's almost we're a bit stiff upper lip, aren't we? We think, well, we know best. But why don't we learn? Because in the Netherlands, you just touch in, touch out, you don't have to go to any machine.

SPEAKER_04 13:01

That is coming, that is that's on the way. That's already being rolled out in uh it's just you must not read the news. It's just been rolled out right here in Wygate and it's caused more problems.

Pay, Shift Work, And Safety Responsibility

SPEAKER_07 13:14

If I can just add the the German railway, the Deutsche Bahn, is nationalised and it's being stopped going through Switzerland partially because they're so late. So nationalisation isn't a silver bullet where it will fix every problem. We can't pretend it is. The German railway system is worse than ours. The the issue is it's always costing. A railway driver earns a lot more money than the average customer. Okay, we've got to reduce costs because people are struggling to pay their rail fares whilst their their train driver is on a lot more money than they are.

SPEAKER_05 13:46

And and there was a whole debate over the garden, the train driver, and whether you need two on the train to try and cut costs, and that's a whole subject again.

SPEAKER_04 13:53

That's a whole subject that I could go at length about, but I won't write here.

SPEAKER_07 13:57

If if if also we praise the Elizabeth Line, which is we're absolutely right to, but do we have drivers on the Elizabeth Line?

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Yes, you have drivers on the Elizabeth Line.

SPEAKER_07 14:06

We have autonomous railway, the overground and the Elizabeth. No, these are autonomous.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

So the overground is not at all autonomous, the Elizabeth Line is through the central London core section only. So there's drivers trains. So there is driver on all trains as far as the full length of the journey. Uh the overground is entirely manually driven. There are essentially the same trains I drive, so they're driven in the same way. The central section of the uh Elizabeth line and the central section of Thames Link are automatic train operation.

SPEAKER_07 14:38

So are you against or are you pro automating trains? And the second question is do you think that train drivers need a pay increase? So there's a pay increase where you say this is worthwhile, and when they go on strike and cause huge delays, do you think if if you were offered a pay rise, do you think that's something that you as a train driver deserve?

SPEAKER_04 14:56

For the record, this uh this continues the discussion I had offline with uh with James earlier, but I'm quite happy to continue.

Automation Myths And Where It Works

SPEAKER_07 15:02

Well, you said to me, you uh let's be frank, no, you said to me to not mention your salary, which I'm not doing. I'm not doing that. I think you said not to finish it.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

My salary is published in the Daily Mail on a regular basis. Um train drivers are responsible for a lot. Um a train driver's shift work is extreme and is the most extreme shift work there is in the UK.

SPEAKER_07 15:24

So uh more extreme than somebody who works in the medical feeds. Yes, because variable has a work what than a nurse or a doctor.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

Yes, because it is variable. One day I can book on up five in the morning, the next three in the morning, the next one in the morning. It can change day by day. That doesn't tend to happen with with nurses or doctors.

SPEAKER_07 15:44

But you're happy to be paid more than a nurse.

Staff Presence, Safety, And Public Expectations

SPEAKER_04 15:46

Our salary is very good. I wouldn't say that it is that I'm demanding a higher salary, personally. Our salary is very good, but that's because we have a union unionized work workforce that's campaigned for that. But our responsibility is very high. Uh, our life expectancy after retirement is very low. The average life expectancy after retirement of a train driver is four years. And that is a study that was done a few years ago, and as far as I know, there's been no variation in that. And I've been to more train driver funerals at a very young age than I care to mention. We we have a demanding job, we have a responsible job. I'm responsible for up to a thousand passengers, actually, probably eleven hundred on a busy train, solely as the only member of staff on the train. So I have a very responsible job and I will defend my salary.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, I was just gonna say um it's a known sort of thing among psychology circles that any element of shift work will have a hugely detrimental effect on your health. So I'm not surprised. I'm shocked to hear that about the uh uh the longevity or lack of, um, but it doesn't surprise me. But I was just gonna say, I was in Cyprus before Christmas, and what's the fascinating fact, Stephen, about the the train system in Cyprus?

SPEAKER_04 16:57

I have no knowledge of the trains in Cyprus.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

That might be because there are no trains in Cyprus. So 1951, they stopped running any kind of trains at all. And that's my solution to this and potholes. I can run two things into one. We take all the trains in this country, rip up all the track, and we lay new roads, and that will solve all of our problems. Brand new roads everywhere, no trains, no shifts, no rotors, no Victorian system. It's a brilliant scheme, and I think I should run with it.

SPEAKER_06 17:26

I'd love to see how you get for Manchester next week.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Four hours of the road. We can fly, or you can take a bus.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

No rail would be a funny thing because uh, on the one hand, I consider uh travelling by rail one of the more eco-friendly, if you will, ways to travel. So I would welcome uh having more train connections and better train connections.

SPEAKER_05 17:49

Trains we don't need let's let's just have a quick vote. How many of us are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Who votes that we follow Cyprus and have no trains? It's just Jack.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

That's really surprising.

Fixing Operations And Building Slack

SPEAKER_07 18:04

If I can just add though, you say you're responsible for a thousand people. How many people have died in the past year, let's say, because of you know, driver recklessness or through the fault of a driver of a train, the risk is very, very, very low.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

Um, over the past year, zero.

SPEAKER_07 18:21

So so it's not this huge responsibility. But we have uh if you make a mistake, people died.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Uh we have it's extremely low. So the idea that you have very serious accidents, Labrook Grove being one where a driver called Michael Hodder passed through a red signal and caused the deaths of sixteen people off the top of my head. When was this?

SPEAKER_07 18:40

When was this?

SPEAKER_04 18:40

There's this 99 Labrook Grove. They happen periodically.

SPEAKER_07 18:45

So the training. So your point is that it's a huge responsibility to get people safely to work. But the idea of there being risk and you're going to 1999.

Joined‑Up Planning And What’s Next

SPEAKER_02 18:55

I don't think any nurse or doctor goes to hospital expecting, or there's a possibility, you know, a signal's past of danger, all that stuff that's so complicated. We've certain we've heard about the antiquated signalling system. There's stuff goes wrong, and a driver through no fault of their own could be killed going to work. And I think that's you know I don't begrudge them a penny.

SPEAKER_07 19:14

No, I do I do because I think you could say that about all work. What about police officers? You are more than a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

You use doctors and nurses, but D brought up, we brought up the shift work.

SPEAKER_07 19:24

You know, I'm sure far more police officers are killed.

Thanks And Closing Remarks

SPEAKER_04 19:27

Rail travel is the safest form of land transport in the world in most countries. There is a reason for that. It's because we have a very professional outlook to the service that we provide. We have an intense training uh schedule. We it takes 18 months to train a train driver. Um, they are monitored. We uh have downloads of the black boxes of our trains on a monthly basis to check that we are driving according to standards. The reason it is safe is because we have safety systems in place. A mistake. I see a mistake can and will cause fatalities, and it does cause fatalities occasionally. Thankfully, not very often.

SPEAKER_05 20:11

Just coming back to the topics. I'm just thinking if George's daughter was hearing this, she's travelling at the weekends, it's not a great experience. Of course, we can debate the train driver pay compared to nurses. Fine. How is this going to get better? I mean, I think we all agree it's been through lack of investment, lack of ambition in the railways, and we're all suffering as a result.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

The great thing that I hope is I hope is coming is joined up thinking. There is uh a podcast I listened to a little while ago. A man called Michael Holden was who was my ultimate boss many years ago. He took over Southeastern, uh Connect Southeastern uh when it was taken back into government ownership and improved it. He took over GNER when it came back into government ownership and improved it. He was asked on a podcast, what's the number one thing? Say you're made managing director of Great British Railways the first thing you will do. And he said, I would make train crew diagramming much less efficient. Uh he went on to explain. He said, We have got drivers that are booked to get off one train, walk over a footbridge, and get on another train five minutes later. So if this train is the first train is five minutes late, the next train is five minutes late. He's uh we have turnarounds. I drive trains with a turnaround time of five minutes to change ends of the train and set up the cab and drive back again. So if I arrive at that destination late, I leave it late again.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

And and this sounds like an operational optimization thing that should just happen.

SPEAKER_04 21:38

I mean, I don't know why massive amount of delays by just increasing those times. So when one train is delayed, it doesn't delay its next train and the next train and the next train. I get it. Why why hasn't it happened already?

SPEAKER_05 21:50

It sounds like a great idea. What what's getting in the way of it?

SPEAKER_04 21:52

It costs more in driver salaries. It could you need more drivers, so it costs more, and the private companies don't want to pay more money is the simple Long and short of it.

SPEAKER_06 22:01

I'm sure a couple drivers could take a little pay cut.

SPEAKER_05 22:04

Look at me. I'll tell you what, I I I'm not ready to get on a driverless train. James, I I know you were saying that you know what happens if we automate them and they're driverless train. I'm not sure I would get on a driverless train. We can't even get the signals, traffic lights working.

SPEAKER_07 22:20

You own a driverless car. So uh I think I think you are. Um I would never trust the the whole time with planes, a lot of that on autopilot. There's more there's more issues with human error than there are with autopilot on planes. I I think you've got to you've got to look at the future and what's it look like. And that's that's the the answer. I mean, I I don't disagree with what Stephen's saying about um changing the way it's all organised. I think he's he's he's right on that. But you you you can't complain about it being a Victorian system and then say, but we can't go and look to future technologies. You have to adopt technologies that make it better for the passengers.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

There is there is no automated complex network in the world with rail. There is automated services, half of the tube is now automatically driven, they are single point-to-point lines. When you get multiple junctions and things like that, the systems are not developed to the level they need to be yet. And they're in long-term. The Victoria Line on the underground opened in 1969 and was intended to be zero drivers, and the public response forced drivers. Okay, as with about a third of London underground lines. The public were not comfortable not having someone in the front cover of that train.

SPEAKER_07 23:40

But the over the overground they are.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

The overground are fully driven all the time.

SPEAKER_07 23:47

On the train, there's a driver.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

No, no, the driver drives it the same as I do, brakes and accelerates for the stations.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Driverless trains perhaps I can live with, assuming that uh we have the tools, we have the technology, we have the AI to take over. But guardless trains. I'm kind of on the fence because we can argue that a CCTV, but what CCTV does is to record what's going on. It doesn't prevent all the bad things that can go on.

SPEAKER_08 24:20

Um I did a lot of commuting in my younger days up into London from uh where I was living at the time, sorry. Um, and I can tell you what, I would not want to be as a woman on a train with no member of staff on it. And I think you know, it's ridiculous to talk about because it's different when you're driving a car and we might all be able to sit back and not not actually manually drive a car in a few years, but you're in your own little space, and I've been accosted and bothered by a lot of men in the past, and it happens to women all the time, and not just women, it happens to other people. We knows get on and things happen. And you know, you've got an awful lot of people on a train, and you need to have some, you know, the at least the reassurance in your mind that if something happens, you can pull the chain and someone will come and find out what the hell's going on. Exactly. So I think that's a ridiculous a human satellite.

SPEAKER_05 25:16

And I think there there is there is a driverless little pod thing at Heathrow, isn't there? From the car park. And even that makes me nervous.

SPEAKER_07 25:24

Look that way, that way you thought about this. But can I I I've been on trains and I've seen people having issues with people, okay, and I've had to get involved, and people have tried to hit me and attack me because I'm stopping people from being attacked. Yeah. Okay. There was no train driver helping, none at all. I was literally somebody trying to hit me because I was stopping somebody from being attacked.

SPEAKER_04 25:44

Did you operate did you operate the passenger alarm? Because the driver's not aware of what's going on behind.

SPEAKER_07 25:49

I answered the cameras. Well, this is this happened more than once. What happens is it stops. They were aware because when we got to the next station, people came in and took that person away. That was it. No driver came along and helped these people. So having put myself in a position where I'm having to have somebody trying to attack me, this happened more than once because of this. They don't do anything. I've had it in stations as well, where people have been having a fight and there's this cowardly staff who won't intervene.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

Well, you used to say that there was that Christmas example where there was a problem on the train. Yeah, and and that there was a driver's coordination, talking to control.

SPEAKER_04 26:24

The driver's actions that ended up in a platform at Huntingdon because the line at Huntingdon, that train was put on a through line with no platform. It was the driver's actions that got the signal to re-route onto the platform line that enabled that train to be dealt with. It was the guard on that train that personally intervened and got himself very, very seriously injured to prevent other people getting that harmed. Those station staff do their job as best as they can, and in both cases, the driver and the guard on that train went above and beyond what they they could have been expected to do.

SPEAKER_06 26:55

Our friend James here, he just uh mentioned about the incident on the train, and then he called the staff cowardly for not interjecting. They're not police, they're not security, they're train staff. They want to get home to their loved ones. We live in a messed up world nowadays. You can get up and get involved in something, and next thing you know, you're getting stabbed by someone, and you won't even like so you have to like now. I'm six foot two, I'm 110 kilos. If I kicked, I would not that I would, I'm just saying, if I had an altercation on the train, the staff aren't gonna be able to help anyone. Like you can't expect them to, that's not their job. But they could also be a professional and call someone, they can call the authorities, but it's not their job to get involved and to protect the public. That's not what they're there for.

SPEAKER_07 27:42

But yes, okay. But if there's a lady involved in this, would you not step in?

SPEAKER_06 27:47

I'm too long to take leave.

SPEAKER_07 27:49

No, no, so so for me, the the staff seeing a woman in this situation and not acting is cowardly. Um, I think that everyone around the table would would hopefully try and help in that situation.

SPEAKER_05 28:01

And it does feel like we're ganging up a little bit on Stephen, who's a train driver, but we're gonna make some final points as we wrap this topic up. I'm still not quite sure. If I was George's daughter, do I feel slightly more positive about weekend trains? Maybe we'll cover that in the final points. By when? The renaturalisation.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Add your crystal ball, Stephen. When do you think it's gonna improve? All these little myriad different companies become what? Okay. They then talk to each other more effectively and more efficiently, they can then plan more efficiently.

SPEAKER_05 28:33

It's a little bit like the unitary authorities we were talking about. Yeah, very much, isn't it? Very much. If that doesn't work, this isn't gonna work either.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

So network well, that sit there with their drawing board and plan when the engineering work's gonna happen, work for a different company than the company that carries the passengers from A to B. If the company that's if the people that deal with the passengers from A to B know that there's a football match, this is a key thing for us for engineering works, there is a football match in Brighton, which has happened before, and say, hang on a minute, you know that engineering works, let's do it next weekend because we've got a big football match. Let's put the customer first. This joined up thinking, and I'm hopeful, I'm not I haven't got a crystal ball myself, but I'm hopeful that the new structure of the railway will be better and more joined up than it currently is, and I will hopefully then be proud to drive trains on it. And that's imminent. That's that's pretty soon. It's uh in 2020, late 2027, I think GBR was started. So it's it's coming.

SPEAKER_05 29:34

We're at the Prince of Wales next to Ryegate Station, they're turning the lights off. It's been a fascinating conversation. I must say a big thank you, Stephen, for giving us some insight into what goes on behind the scenes for train drivers. Uh, another lively discussion on crossing back into the community spirit and taking ownership and accountability and not just necessarily calling the police, uh, which is another topic in itself. Georgie, thank you for bringing this to the table. James, Ickbell, Maureen, Jack. It's been fun. This is Sussex Surrey Soapbox. Back next week with another exciting topic, hopefully in a slightly less noisy place.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

You're listening to the Sussex and Surrey Soapbox. Community opinion, real facts, and balanced conversation on the topics that matter most to you.