Passengers not allowed on train (BBC News)
 

A rail lobby group calls for better contingency plans for staffing a northern route after a sick conductor leads to an empty train.

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In fairness, finding relief staff at short notice in remote parts of the network such as the far north of Scotland, as in this case, must be difficult but, it does happen in areas like London and Birmingham where there can be no excuse. Any company, particularly those who are supposed to be running a service, must have spare capacity available to meet contingencies.

They simply cannot expect that staff will never go sick and trains will never break down so that they must have systems in place when they do. It infuriates me when I hear that services have been cancelled due to staff shortages or train failures as though it was something that they never even remotely thought might happen. It's just a sign of badly managed organisations which have cut costs so much that they simply have no spare capacity to cover the inevitable.

Lets be fair.

There's only so many bodies you can put on standby around the country within reasonable practicability.

If the conductor of a Pacer in the middle of out-and-out nowhere suddenly goes for burton, then even if someone is available, it might be hours before he can reach the train, or the train can reach him.

It's not like Northern can have bodies stashed at every quarter-mile post in little huts just in case, really.

FSR probably do have a spare capacity at Wick.

Now lets look at the senario,

1. Its holiday time ( Yes we railway staff are allowed to take holidays )

2. The spare conductor was more than likely covering a holiday conductor.

3. Try getting a rest day man at that time of the morning in Wick.

4. The next nearest FSR depot is Inverness, 160 miles away.

I think what I would have done would be to put a spare conductor from Inverness in a taxi and sent him/her to Brora or maybe Lairg depending on the position of the train, which is easy to find out by keeping in touch with the RETB signallers, and the trian could then have continued in service from there.

My opinion only Les

I did acknowledge that in this instance, having spare capacity would be very difficult but it should be possible in most parts of the network.

I am afraid that when they have a problem, TOC's, bus operators and airlines too are just too quick to cancel services rather than make the effort to provide the service that they are obligated and often conracted to do. No-one is saying that it is easy but when public transport was provided as a service rather than as a means of making a profit, operators had sufficient resources and spare capacity to cover breakdowns, staff problems etc and didn't simply make announcements that such and such a service had been cancelled.