Being Senior

I remember seeing a driver sit on the stairs sobbing with his head in his hands after someone jumped in front of his train in Thorton Heath. All I saw as we passed by was a policeman place a cover over a torso on the tracks.

 

You know Plod leave and a big percentage go and work in Rail industry?

I think most Signallers and Train Drivers are ex-Police, around where I live.

Whilst their union is to powerful and needs a bit of a beat down, it’s a great career for some. Especially signalling. My friend is barely 30 and she is earning after 5 years nearly £70,000. That’s a Police Superintendent level and almost double the national average, without much stress.

Personally, I would hate to sit in a box for 12 hours.

You come across as very opinionated, which is fine as do I, but I think you must truly understand the ins and outs before commenting with such comedy.

 

I appreciate the risk and certainly wasn’t down playing the role. Just the mental aspect for me, I couldn’t do it.

I’m like a wild ferret so travelling/being on the move is my thing.

 

Come on Guys, let’s be civil to each other. Life is too short

 

NP Darth, I'll just ignore the twerp

 

There were 1500 ish drink drivers in cars in 2020. Ergo all car drivers are drunks. Im not surprised he retired. His brain barely functions so as to keep his other organs going.

 

Point taken, though they were only the ones that were caught. I'm not suggesting there's a drinking culture amongst train drivers. But neither do they have the responsibilities or capabilities of a Pilot or Doctor. And plod and ambulance staff that have to pick up suicide remains from tracks are just as affected. Do they get anything like £60k+ a year?

 

So that makes train jockeys seem grossly overpaid then. And how much do the funeral guys with the bags and buckets get paid? The initial trauma for the driver is over in seconds, funeral directors could be there for hours.

 

Both situations must be very hard for most people to deal with imo. I expect watching someone face explode across your train cab is appalling and coupled with the knowledge that you were the driver makes it unbearable for many. The high percentage who leave the train drivers profession after a suicide or accident are well known.

Its arguably the funeral people who are underpaid?

 

I probably didn’t help by quoting Train Driver salaries and conditions of services.

Don’t really know much about pilots and aeroplane safety but modern trains and railway infrastructure is packed with safety features (incab and trackside) which makes it harder for a collision to occur although you wouldn’t get me in the drivers cab for £60k a year, my attention span is terrible.

As an aside many years ago I was a railway ops inspector and attended 6-7 railway fatalities. In the Midlands we used the Co-Op funeral services to recover bodies from the railway but that couldn’t happen until we (BT Police and ops Inspectors) had located all the body parts.

Happy days.

 

I've noticed that too and had a mini-rant about it a while back. It's been going on long before Covid.

To my absolute shock and horror, it was particularly prevalent the day after the Euros final when 3 trains in a row on the journey from Herts into London and then every single one of the trains on the return journey at rush hour were cancelled due to "driver unavailability" (AKA driver bone idleness and malingering). The trip I was doing usually takes about an hour/an hour and a quarter but the inbound journey took almost 3 hours and the outbound one, 4 hours.

 

I agree with you Zhed, and I feel the same way about surgeons. Quite often your very important NHS op has to be cancelled due to the feckers being to busy lining their wallets even further doing hobles