Staff absenteeism

That the Island Line was closed owing to the sickness of one person on September 7 (RAIL 966) is a shocking indictment of the lack of resilience on the modern railway.

Unfortunately, this is not isolated to the Isle of Wight. On August 21-22, the Welsh Borders line was closed between Abergavenny and Leominster because “no one could be found to staff a key signal box”, according to railway staff.

Passengers were bussed between the two points, which didn’t help me because I was travelling from Swansea to Newcastle with a bicycle. Fortunately, I was routed via the Central Wales line.

Since then, I have been told

of other similar closures. It all smacks of management failure to anticipate and mitigate such risks.

My fear is that passengers and freight customers are not so tolerant, and that it feeds into a malaise of unmanaged decline until one day a politician under extreme budgetary pressure will ask: “why are we paying for this mess?”

Robert Hope, Sunderland