TV series casts rail industry in a misleading light
As a rail enthusiast, I have felt compelled to watch the recent Channel 5 series Paddington Station 24/7.
But am I alone in having feelings of embarrassment for the industry? In nearly every episode it seems there’s an incident that results in total or partial closure of an important part of the Great Western Railway line.
Such events will surely lead viewers who are not rail fans to believe that not a day goes by without serious disruption to the timetable, which surely isn’t the case?
I understand that the TV production company will not want to broadcast a programme that covers a day when everything goes right (to reverse the old saying, “Good news is no news”), but surely GWR ought to want the commentary to provide a better balance than it currently does, by insisting that viewers hear more reassuring words about the number of trains that run on time, or the increase in the number of trains and of passenger numbers, or the safety record? If GWR is expecting a reputational rise as a result of this latest series, I think it may be mistaken.
Aside from the repeated line closure issue, other cringeinducing examples where the producers made negative capital out of relatively everyday issues included pieces of new track panels being difficult to get into position without some seemingly unplanned manhandling of them over a fence into Maidenhead station car park, and where an overnight track renewal gang didn’t have the right-sized spanner/socket to remove a fishplate.
In the first example, the defect was on the slow lines. It would have been far more interesting to learn how the defect had been detected, as the ‘Flying Banana’ had featured briefly earlier in the same episode. Was the flaw detected by the ‘Flying Banana’, by human observation, or by a rail electronic monitoring device?
And I do wish they wouldn’t use the scare-mongering expression ‘broken rail’, which suggests the rail has severed completely, and use ‘cracked rail’ instead. Much less alarmist, but that might not suit the programme maker’s intentions.
It would be very interesting to learn from GWR what it believes these ‘warts and all’ programmes have done for the company, both internally and externally! Dave Fletcher, Bradford