Letting off steam

HAVE you ever seen the sign at train stations which basically tells you it is wrong to be rude or assault staff?

It's the one which, at first glance, looks as though they are promoting equal rights for dyslexic - but the idea is that it's as hard to understand the poster as it is to understand why people would assault train staff.

I'd fully agree, if it wasn't for the fact train staff have now taken that poster to be some sort of wonderful right to be as abusive, rude and downright unhelpful as possible.

The customer is no longer king when you travel on our trains - certainly not the Virgin or Northern services oop North anyhow - and the RMT-fortified staff seem to believe we should be eternally grateful just for getting to work.

Last Thursday, I was on the way into Liverpool on the train and it came to a stop at Broad Green, a stop it wasn't even supposed to stop at. For the next 20 minutes it didn't move, until the chappie with the ticket machine came through and said there was a broken down train ahead which may move in five minutes, or maybe five hours.

Asked what I should do, he said: "Get a bus. I've know idea what to do." Perhaps ring ahead and find out how long till the train can be towed away?

Monday morning. Manchester Piccadilly. They've these things called Fast Ticket machines which are supposed to end the need to queue at a ticket office by allowing you to buy your ticket, you guessed it, through a machine. The machine I went to wasn't working. The THREE men in Virgin Trains suits at the customer 'help' desk could see I was struggling. I asked for help. They said 'you'll have to go and join a queue' despite the fact they could actually do it on the computer in front of them. The gob of the three said this while laughing and with his hands behind his head.

He could perhaps have pointed out there were seven other machines, all working, which I could have used, and which I found under my own initiative.

And when I eventually got on to the train - run by Central Trains, the company which didn't realise there would be extra people travelling to Cardiff on the day of a football play-off final being played at a stadium 100 yards from the station - the conductor got annoyed with the length of time it took people to get off and then back on the train.

He shouted: "Come on, hurry up, you're holding the train up." Hang on, when was the last time you heard the customer being blamed for a train being let? What is the purpose of the train network? To get someone on time or to get people to a destination?

Then today, I was at a station where you can't buy tickets. I got on the train. The ticket man never came. I got to Liverpool and tried to buy a ticket from the ticket man at the ticket barrier (whose job, I presume, is to make sure people don't get off trains and the station without leaving the station.) What do you think he did? Thanked me for my honesty? Instantly produced my ticket? No, he tutted. Cos 'it means getting my machine going.'

I could go on, and invariably will. I understand fully why there are campaigns to make sure people don't attack the police/ambulance/fire services when they are attending jobs. They're saving lives. But campaigns to stop us being rude or offensive to rail staff? Perhaps the rail companies would be better off taking money away from ad companies and towards customer training, perhaps therefore making travelling by train more attractive and therefore keeping more services going and therefore employing more train people?

Or am I just being daft?