[Melancholy piano music]
[Music continues to play]
[Music picks up with a beat and a melody, but remains melancholy]
It's er ... it's Sunday the 17th
of May ... 2020
and i counted, this morning when I left the house
i haven't been on a train
for 57 days.
Which is a sentence ... i never thought i'd say
i'm on a bridge just north of East Croydon station
Overlooking the Brighton mainline
I can still look at them
from a distance, when i'm out on my bike
It's kinda noisy though, i'm gonna find somewhere quieter
[Music restarts]
[BIke tyres on gravel noise, brakes squeak]
[*thud* of bike against metal railing]
So I last went on a train
it was the middle of March, it was before ...
the lockdown, and do not travel, was introduced
and i was on a South Eastern service and it was empty anyway, like I had the whole carriage
perhaps the whole train to myself
at the invite of GTR, heading to East Croydon
to see what's going on now
as some people ... start to use the train services again
What's Changed?
[Music plays again]
It's so quiet!
it's 'cause it's a Sunday - well no actually, everyday feels like a Sunday
it's just been so strange, having no
having no routine, you know i think a lot of people they focus on about
doing their commute
going to work
there's a certain part of me, and other people too
actually, sometimes
travelling on train is ... is the joy
it in itself, is a leisure activity
if you're having a bad day
you can just go for a train ride
or go to a random station just for the sake of it, and that
that can give you like a mental lift
i mean i almost miss hearing 'see it .. say it .. sort it'
ALMOST!
[background chatter of people working]
So we're at East Croydon
which is err ... off camera, how many people
i'm chatting to a lovely lady off-camera
how many people would you normally get through here on a daily basis?
[*speaker off-camera] on a daily basis it would be about a quarter of a million
two hundred and fifty thousand people a day
would normally come through East Croydon, i'm chatting to the lovely Ramla
she's the Station Manager
but we're gonna go to the platforms, and err ...
we'll just see what's happeing on the platforms of East Croydon and discuss
what changes have happened ... over the past few weeks
everybody meet Ramla!
now, now i've got keep my distance! when we do this *laughs*
and normally i'd shake your hand so i'm not ... i'm not doing that either
Hello .. what! .. i'll just wave from a distance
errr, tell us quickly what you do here at East Croydon
my name is Ramla, i'm the station manager at East Croydon
i just manage the daily going with the ... errr
the station, the running of the station
over the last
few weeks, what was it like? did passengers just suddenly drop
one day, have you seen, as was it quiet for a week
have they slowly been coming back through
your gateslines?
it has, i think on the first week of lockdown we have noticed
quite a big drop
and it continued to drop, by the end of the week
we had about 60% of the normal passengers that we would have
and then it was quiet for about 6-7 weeks
and once the annoucement ... that people can't work from home
can go back to work, from the Wednesday
it actually has picked up
i note here, so as, so as the waiting area
has been taped off ... that's been .. has that been taped off since
since the lockdown, so since .. March 21st wasn't it?
so people generally are just spaced out ... and wait
on the platforms. Is it . .. is it weird on a Monday morning at 8 o'clock
when the platforms are noticeably quieter?
it is .. it has been so weird, and it has been
it's quite surreal
seeing that the first couple of weeks coming
on the rush hour onto the platform and not seeing one
or two people ... in the whole entire East Croydon station
it took ... a time, for us to get used to it
every day felt very eerie!
[Music returns]
*Hand Sanitiser Dispenser Noise*
So i can see ... on the floor
beneath my feet ... big, bright, pink stickers
so you're recommending that people stay
two meters apart when they're queueing for .. tickets
do people as a rule ... do they, do they
are they good? they tend to do that?
yes there are like ... as good as gold! stand on the queue, wait til the next one is free and then step onto the next one
it's been actually brilliant, so far
they've followed ... on all our requests
payment methods have changed as well, if customers .. can
manage to pay by contactless, or by card
to avoid any cash handing for our staff, to do that, and .. the passengers as well
i've given Ramla my camera which means we're now
best friend for life, basically
so ... you can only recommend
that passengers do wear a face mask
but .. is not a legal requirement is it? they're just saying
it would be nice if you do right?
Yeah .. so we are only, on advising right now
so we advise our passengers to wear it
when they can, where they can
alright ... Masks!
I justed wanted to come behind the scenes, err
at East Croydon, so your office is in there, this is the ticket office area
so presumably, you're doing ...
there's certian measures in place, to safeguard your staff err as well
ah, yes! so safeguard our staff
we are not having all seven windows open, we are
open the windows at a distance, one open one closed
all of them have got the ... hand sanitisers, in place to use it
they've also got the blue roll, cleaning stuff
to keep their workspace nice and clean
the breaks they knows as well .. so one person goes, when they've finished the other person goes
just to maintain that social distancing
Ramla, again i want to shake your hand but we can't actually do it, so let's do a virtual ...
*laughs* handshake ... like that!
So i can't get the train
Still not been on a train!
[Music]
[Dramatic music continues]
Cycling away from East Croydon station
the timetable, railways, scheduling, err
nerd, inside of me was also wondering about
the services, and the service patterns
but I asked GTR and they said, would you like to speak, to the man in the know
and i said sure! ... and they said
you can have a conversation with Steve White, the Chief Operating Officer of GTR
but in the new world and new way of doing things
i'm heading home, so we can do it
via video chat.
So i'm joined .. online at home, the new way of doing things!
at home, the new way of doing things
is to have a video call
and thanking you for joing me, is Steve Wight
the Chief Operating Officer for Govia Thameslink Railway
hello Steve, good afternoon!
it's a pleasure Geoff, thank you for ... hosting me
when this all started, what, seven ... eight weeks ago now
how did, how did Southern and Thameslink and everybody
how did you change your timetable, did you initially
scale back to a Saturday timetable, or a Sunday timetable
how did that work?
Well, as our own team began to be affected by Coronavirus
just like the rest of society
we realised that we were not able to sustain the operational full timetable
so we took a first step down on the 23rd March
followed it a week later with a step down on the 30th March
and we've been running a timetable
essentially based on a Sunday service, with
extra early and late trains, err for the last eight weeks
and today is the first opportunity we've had
to step back up again
towards a new normal
and then slowly i guess, hopefully as we all want them to
slowly things return to some sort of normal, you'll then
ramp up your service, presumably you'll monitor
how people are coming through, and you'll match
you'll match the services, to the demand
well monitoring is really important
so, we've now got a daily report that shows us
how many ticket sales we've had to yesterday and the same day last week
err, how busy our stations are so we can get gateline data
in fifteen minute intervals
and also on our latest trains, we can get real-time
on-board information, to see how manby people
are actually travelling on our trains
and we also launched last Friday, Geoff
an App for our staff to report any incidents where
social distancing is not possible
So we are very carefully monitoring the use of our network
and we'll make tactical interventions when we can
we might make the train longer, we might just
change the stopping patterns, we can make tactical interventions
that, across the whole of the rail industry
it will only be possible to go back to a full timetable
when obviously we are able to have all of our colleagues back at work
and we are some way away from that position.
But today is a good step in right direction.
[Music re-starts]
Found another spot
where i can watch the trains
what a strange day, what strange times ...
we just find ourselves living in generally
i'm not here to tell you if you should or shouldn't be travelling on a train or not
follow the advice ... from the train companies
on their website, and they've got posters at stations
i'm not travelling on trains
err, at the moment i hope i will be soon
otherwise those 57 days is gonna be ...
who knows? how many?
I will just say that my channel and my videos
predominantly obvious transport travel railway based
so everyone is extremely thankful to all the
the NHS and other key workers, but especially as this is a railway video
if you working - as driver, on the platforms, ticket office, gatelines
thank you for doing that thank you for keeping our
railways running, for the people that do need to travel, umm
it's appreciated.
[music plays]