That makes two nights running that Merseyrail have managed to turn a journey into a trauma.
But last nights really WAS a trauma. It would almost have been funny.if I hadn’t been trying to get home from an after-work beer with SWMBO*, been lied to by a member of Merseyrail staff and saw someone nearly fall under a train.
Basically, it went like this:
Waiting in James Street for the 20:37 West Kirby train, on the normal platform (3, I think it is) an announcement was made that there was a ‘track fault’ at Central (you know, the same track that was shut for a whole month earlier this year for maintenance, causing a good deal of inconvenience). All Wirral Line trains would now start and terminate at James Street.
Note that the electronic board still said our West Kirby train was about 2 minutes away.
A chap from Merseyrail comes down a couple of minutes later and says, to the waiting travellers in general, something to the effect of “I don’t know why you’re standing here, there aren’t any trains running from this platform, you should be on platform1″. This wasn’t actually what the announcement said, and I wasn’t the only one to spot this.
So we all trundle to platform 1. Chaos, total chaos, ensued.
There was a train waiting at the platform, but no-one knew where it was going. The guard, the driver and the station staff all disagreed about where it was going, the board was blank by now and the train itself said “Out of Service”!
When they made up their minds where it was going, some passengers were hurried onto the train via the rear guards door, as the main doors were now shut – more on this eyebrow-raising practice in a minute.
The train left and was soon replaced by another. There was a degree of confusion as to where this one was going too, but not quite as extreme as previously. But AGAIN they let last minute passengers on using the guards door – and as one chap was stepping onto the train, it pulled away!
He was lucky not to have what could have been a terrible accident. Are Merseyrail staff encouraged to risk the punters lives in this manner? (I would like to point out that this incident will presumably be on Merseyrails CCTV, should my word on it be doubted. There were several other witnesses, whose names I now wish I’d taken).
I confronted the two members of staff about this incident, and they claimed that “the passenger” that was allowed to enter the train this way had “left their bag on the train”! What, all of them had?
Maybe it’s a new MerseyRail policy for reducing over-crowding – kill off a few of the annoying passengers that insist on filling up the trains!
I’ll finish this post later, when I get more time …
*SWMBO – She Who Must Be Obeyed
