Every pound must count

I was at the tiny (very rural) Haddiscoe station in southeast Norfolk recently, and saw a notice advising the public that Network Rail is extending the short Norwichbound platform. It used to be much longer, but was cut back many years ago after the high-level station on the East Suffolk Line closed.

I saw two NR men walking the track and asked them what job they were doing. They refused to answer, but clearly they weren’t working on the platform extension.

Once on the said platform I met another NR employee in his orange kit, hard hat and safety glasses. I asked him if he was working on the

platform extension. and he replied no, he was only there for safety reasons.

The fence that used to run along the back of the platform had been removed and replaced with a temporary rope construction. Behind the rope is a soil bank sloping down about four feet to the car park. He informed me that his sole job that day was to meet every stopping train using that one platform and warn passengers not to go near the rope fence.

There are only 14 trains that stop between about 0600 and 2300. So that will require two or maybe even three shifts of ‘fence guarding employees’ - maybe ten minutes of ‘work’ for every stopping train!

The man I spoke to informed me that he wouldn’t be there for the rest of the day as he had to get back to his home in Lincolnshire. Wouldn’t it have been much more cost-effective if that man could have actually done some fence replacement work between trains?

Moving staff around the country is nothing new - a friend of mine who lives in Suffolk was sent to Carlisle just to couple and uncouple locomotives when trains were diverted off the East Coast Main Line north of Newcastle.

So I found Nigel Harris’s column in RAIL 823 very interesting. “Every pound must count - NR must find ways to more effectively challenge rising costs.”

Brian Scott, Stowmarket