Industry has adhered to the guidelines with a united front

Both Christian Wolmar and Sir Michael Holden, in their recent opinion pieces ( RAIL 907), have really got the wrong end of the stick if they think the railway family has been complicit in scaring away passengers.

Do they not watch the news? Do they not pay attention to the medical and scientific advice that the Government has been given?

We’re in the middle of the most serious crisis of modern times, one which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in this country, and Government instigated both a lockdown and a series of other measures - including social distancing - for us all.

The central message was: unless you were an essential worker, stay at home. Don’t travel. Don’t go anywhere (with a few exceptions).

That would be why the railway has been bereft of passengers!

And it still is, unless you need to use public transport to go to work.

And if you do, wear a face covering, and maintain two-metre social distancing wherever you can.

Which is a national instruction - not one the railway has invented itself, or one in which its management has somehow been “complicit” in imposing.

My chief executive has very eloquently summed up the railway’s actions to Coronavirus in four stages:

Respond - What we did immediately on lockdown. New timetable. Implementing national instructions to preserve health and lives.

Rebuild - where we are now. Rebuilding the timetable with an almost normal service in the planning for early July.

Revive - when social distancing rules are relaxed and we can entice people back to the railway, act at pace to do so.

Renew - using the COVID crisis and new industry structures to renew and run the railway in a whole new, sustainable way, to rebuild the economy and the way we live.

We should all be very proud of the way the railway has responded to the crisis, and how tens of thousands of railway men and women have come together as an industry - to help keep essential workers and freight moving, continuing to invest heavily, and supporting a huge supply chain of small and medium-sized British businesses.

We are complying with guidance from the Government who have determined the steps we must all take to avoid more deaths from this deadly virus. When that changes, we can start to resume the role the railway normally plays; but not until then.

It’s a pity we can’t all come on board and support the industry, but there will always be those on the sidelines shouting their views so loudly they can’t hear or see what’s really going on.