Railway loses the plot on lost property

Silly old grandad, taking his seven-year-old twin grandsons on holiday in Wales on Saturday July 23, left the bag with all their clothes on the train when changing at Birmingham International onto the Cambrian Coast service.

It was not until the old duffer got to his destination at Pensarn (Gwynedd) that he realised that the bag had been left on the Avanti train.

A quick phone call to Molly, my not very pleased daughter, who without her little darlings to look after at least had time on her hands to try to sort it out.

Or, rather, try to. As she was in the vicinity, she dropped into Euston to ask about how to get it back. The good news was that there is a combined Lost Property and Left Luggage office at Euston… the bad news was that the Lost Property section is only open Monday to Friday business hours.

So, the Left Luggage person was not able to help her, other than to give her a couple of phone numbers to ring. One did not work, and the other gave her a further two numbers to phone (one was Avanti and the other Network Rail). Both were recorded messages and asked her to fill out forms. Both said that if anything were found, they would advise her.

She had been advised that the train terminated at Edinburgh, but when she tried to call Network Rail Lost Property there, it was again only a Monday to Friday service. Later that evening, she received an email from Edinburgh saying it was not there.

Silly old grandad tried Twitter and was also told that no bag had been found there and that “there’s very little we can do”.

When I queried this and wondered if the bag had been left on the train, ‘Miles’ responded: “It’s not likely, Christian, as our cleaners will have walked through the train when it terminated and handed anything to the relevant people. It is always possible that a public member took it and handed it in elsewhere.”

The Avanti website information on lost property requires a good knowledge of the railway system to understand. Which company might have the property depends on where the train terminates, something which must seem very strange to anyone unfamiliar with our crazy rail system.

My daughter persevered. On the Monday, she tried to ring Euston, but there was never any answer and nor did her emails get any response.

As she works near Euston, on the Tuesday she popped in, and… lo and behold, there was the bag. It had been found alone on Platform 5 on Sunday morning, presumably having stayed on the train at Edinburgh and then found by cleaners at Euston.

Molly had not been advised it was there, and suspects that had she not been persistent and turned up in person, the bag would have simply been disposed of after three months and she would never have heard of it.

If any rail manager or civil servant in the Department for Transport, or indeed minister, thinks this is sensible or customerfriendly, then they are living in a fantasy land. This is poor, unco-ordinated, dismissive service that reflects badly on the railway. Lost property should surely be an integrated service, co-ordinated centrally.

Memo to Great British Railways: there are now websites, email and social media platforms available to provide this kind of service, which should be set up as soon as you start work.