I WRITE as a rail user, not employee, but urge everyone to support train crew in their campaign to keep a fully trained guard on each train.
Fortunately, at the moment, South Western Railway trains still have guards.
However elsewhere in the country others are not so lucky and avoidable incidents are occurring on driver only trains as recently happened on a Thameslink train operated by Govia on Southern Railways.
A couple of weeks ago a mother was boarding at Crawley station with her three children. Two got on ahead of her but as she followed, with her youngest in a buggy, the carriage doors began to close. She was left with no option but to quickly withdraw the buggy and scream for help from the platform.
To everyone’s horror the train departed with two of her children still on board.
As it happened, luckily, a junior school teacher just happened to be there to look after the children when they disembarked at a station, eight miles away. After frantic phone calls, to locate them, they were eventually reunited with their mother an hour later.
This is just one incident that illustrates how the unforeseen is more likely to happen on driver only trains and furthermore cannot be quickly resolved without a guard.
Therefore, for our long term benefit, I urge everyone to support train crew in their Keep The Guard On The Train campaign.
DEREK HARDMAN
Weymouth
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