by Charles F Hankel RIP
Much loved, much missed, never boring...

As some of you may be aware, I am travelling to work on site just outside
Knutsford and haven't yet decided on whether or not to buy a car.  So, I'm
reliant on two buses and two trains to get me to the office, and the same
number of each for the return journey.

Normally, I get a bus to take me to Hamilton Square station where I catch
the 06:41 to arrive at 07:15 at Chester.  Then, rather than sprint for the
07:15 departure, I usually take tea before embarking on the 07:46.  My
fallback connection is the 08:20 and after that it's panic because the next
train is at 09:57.

I should also point out, in mitigation, that the railway company may
currently be Arriva but they've inherited some pretty awful industrial
relations and operating economies from MTL, whom they bought about a year
ago.  For any of you unfamiliar with the situation on Merseyrail Electrics,
MTL did much the same as Stagecoach did to the Southwest, sacked people and
skinned the operation down to a bare minimum, and much of the damage done
then isn't yet repaired, either in terms of the railway or the staff.

On Monday, 13th August, the weekend trackworks over-ran their schedule on
the line between Birkenhead and Chester.  I arrived at Hamilton Square in
good time only to find that the previous train had been cancelled and that
the prospects for mine weren't promising.  The inidcator board kept adding
minutes, instead of subtracting them as usual.

There was no information being made available to us and we eventually got
through to the Merseyrail information people.  We asked why alternative
transport hadn't been made availabel as they surely knew long enough in
advance that the line wasn't going to be ready.  Merseyrail won't pay for
night working so it was obviously known to them that there'd be a delay in
the morning from the state that te works were left in on the Sunday.  They
simply acted ignorant, hanging up the phone on the people calling them
(there's a phone thingy on every platform), and parting with basically
useless disinformation.

Eventually, after about quarter past seven the train arrived but waited for
ten minutes to depart at about half past seven.  We were delivered to
Hooton where we told to get off and wait for the next train.  To anyone who
doesn't know the place, Hooton station isn't the most welcoming of places
and they have a practice of changing the clocks there to make it look as
though the trains are on time.  Fortunately the weather was fine.

Eventually, we ended up at Chester station at half past eight, and hour and
a quarter late in my case, in the case of others, somewhere approaching two
hours late.  There were three of us who had been banking on the Knutsford
connection and who were left stranded until 09:57 if we were lucky.

I asked the platform man from First North West if there was a Merseyrail
representative around and he asked why.  I explained and he said that there
was probably only the guard of the train that we had arrived on.  I
approached the guard as he was making his way to the train and asked if he
could get in tocuh with his operations people about some onward transport.
He was pretty rude about this and refused, so I asked him if he'd give me
their number so that I could make the the call.  He again rudely refused by
which time he had climbed into the train to dump his bag and make ready for
the departure.

Seeing this potential last chance disappearing, I sat down.  My feet on the
platform with my backside planted firmly on the floor of the train,
blocking the guard's doorway.  He threatened to phone the police to which I
responded that if he could phone the police, he could also phone his
operations people.  Oh, and while he was at it, I could phone the Chester
Chronicle to see what sort of information that newspaper may have, or care
to gather.  A bit of a bluff that last one since I didn't have their phone
number, though I do now.

He then started to accuse me of holding his train up but that was silenced
by one of my cot-ravellers saying that getting him here almost two hours
late hadn't bothered Arriva, so why should a few minutes matter to them now
while he (the guard) called Sandhills ops centre and arranged something for
us so that we could get to work that day?  Perhaps the guard himself would
like to pay us for our lost day because he was depriving us of our income
by his refusal to do the reasonable thing and call in?  This particular
cot-raveller is a lawyer and they're often good at bluff and counter bluff.

Anyway, I refused to move myself.  The guard was shaping up as though he
wanted to physically attack me, and mentally I was willing him to (that
would look good in the papers, "guard attacks fat middle-aged man").
There's no doubt about it, I was enjoying myself by this point.

Then I heard a voice on the radio being held by the platform chap, who had
remained with as a vaguely interested bystander, and it uttered the word
"taxi" along with some other unintelligible stuff.  The guard was getting
stroppier by the second and I was becoming more and more carefree because I
was actually controlling situation for once that morning.  So I just kep
goading him, pointing to the telphone sets in the cab and asking if one of
them connected with Sandhills.  He could easily resolve the situation by
simply picking it up and explaining the situation to them.  He also had a
mobile that he could equally easily use, or let me call them.  All the way,
he refused and pretty agressively too.

Eventually, the First North West chap said that the station supervisor
(also First North West) had called Sandhills and that Arriva had agreed to
spring for a taxi for the three of us.  I asked the platform chap why the
guard hadn't been able to do this in the first place and he tried to shrug
without being seen by the guard.  Once we had it clear that a taxi had been
arranged, I turned round to the guard and asked him why he hadn't done it
himself in the first place and wasn't he ashamed of having another
company's people display a decent customer service attitude when he had
clearly forgotten who kept him in employment.

With that I stood up, somewhat reluctantly because I was quite comfortable
there but to carry on would have been unreasonable to the people waiting on
the train for it to leave.  I have been sitting there for ten minutes.

And so, that's how I abducted a guard and held a train and its passengers
hostage until Arriva acceded to my demands.

The station supervisor told us, when we got to his office, that he was
surprised that Arriva had agreed to the taxi because they apparently don't
normally do that sort of thing.



-- 

Charles F Hankel
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Hapless FAQer on the Wirral peninsula           http://www.umra.org.uk/
Member: Strombone 2000                          -- for the umra FAQ --