Our front line
As efforts to control the Coronavirus pandemic continue to keep large parts of Britain’s economy and society at a standstill, PAUL STEPHEN speaks to some of the men and women tasked with keeping the nation’s rail network moving and maintaining this vital
Meet some of the railway heroes who are helping to keep key workers and essential services moving.
There’s no doubt about it - we are living in exceptional times. Faced with the most significant public health crisis in a century, the population has largely embraced the strict but essential government instructions on social distancing that have been carefully designed to protect lives and to curb the spread of COVID-19.
For most of us, that has meant learning how to live, how to work (where possible), and how to remain safe from within the confines of our own homes.
As part of this unprecedented lockdown, the message has been loud and clear: people should only leave their homes under a limited number of circumstances - to buy essential items, to take exercise, to fulfil medical or care needs, or to travel to and from work if this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home.
To help establish who should and shouldn’t be travelling to work, the Government has published a list of key workers whose jobs are deemed vital to public health and safety.
The most obvious example of these key workers are NHS and social care staff, who continue to bravely perform their duties and provide essential healthcare under the strain of ever-mounting numbers of hospital admissions, and often at great personal risk to themselves.
However, the list of key workers also extends to several other sectors - including security, utilities, education, the food chain, public administration and (of course) transport.
After all, without the latter, key workers might not be able to attend their places of work. And consignments of freight would remain undelivered - threatening key flows such as the supply of goods to supermarkets and the delivery of fuel to power stations.
To provide a flavour of how the railway is continuing to keep vital goods moving and train services running for essential workers, we asked a selection of rail organisations to nominate employees to speak on behalf of all railway colleagues.
These individuals are by no means the only railway heroes prepared to leave the relative safety of their homes in the line of duty, but they provide a snapshot of how life on the frontline has dramatically changed since the start of the UK lockdown on March 23.
While all have been modest about their own contributions to the national effort to combat Coronavirus, each interviewee was keen to emphasise the shared nature of their experiences.
They demonstrate how an entire workforce has flexed and adapted amid a nationwide backdrop of nervousness and uncertainty, and how many thousands of people in the sector have uncomplainingly cast aside self-interest in support of a common cause.
While each of these heart-warming stories fully deserve individual recognition, they are also testament to the unity of a workforce that is pulling through together, and of the special bond that exists between all those in the railway family.