PLANS are afoot to appoint an individual who will have oversight of Britain’s rail network, a role dubbed the “Fat Controller” after the head honcho in the Thomas the Tank Engine books.
According to Keith Williams, who is leading the Government-commissioned Rail Review, the appointment of a "Fat Controller" type figure would be "key for regaining public trust".
Regaining public trust in the railways is unlikely any time soon, but the Fat Controller would certainly be good news for beleaguered passengers.
I don’t know if weight is part of the job description, but the real Fat Controller certainly has bags of experience at running a railway.
His appointment could well be a masterstroke as Thomas the Tank Engine and chums are deployed to ease capacity issues across the network.
Thomas himself could work alongside Edward and Toby easing congestion on some of the notoriously overcrowded routes in and around Glasgow.
The engines would even smile as the last passenger is pushed onboard the 07.52 to Glasgow Central.
Henry, the big green engine, and James, the red engine, would work the long-distance routes from the Central Belt north.
Pride of place, though, would be Gordon, the big blue engine, majestically sweeping along the flagship Glasgow to Edinburgh route.
At either end, passengers would alight and board smiling buses with names like Bertie to take them onwards into the cities. On time and on budget.
If only running a railway was as easy as the Rev W Awdry made it sound when he started his children's books in 1946.
But for the millions of passengers who frequently suffer delays and cancellations it appears that it can’t be as hard as current operators make it.
One of the biggest single factors in the state of the railways is the problem of ‘capacity’. To you and me, this means kit such as carriages. Logically, capacity will be increased at busy times. Basic supply and demand.
But despite passenger numbers rising by more than 80 per cent over the past three decades, train firms appear to have moved to meet this demand by increasingly making trains smaller. Why have 80 passengers sitting comfortably on a six-carriage service when you can shoehorn them all into two and keep the other carriages as spares?
It is infuriating for rush-hour commuters to see two-carriage services appearing when the service is normally four or six.
It is incompetent management, pure and simple. There can be no ‘operational’ reason for rush-hour trains to have fewer carriages than off-peak services on a regular basis.
It is not the driver's fault their service is too small and nor is it the conductor's fault. They, after all, have to battle through passengers to open the doors and let them all fall out.
Scotland is supposed to be striving to have a world-class rail network, but as a regular commuter it is far off from being remotely world-leading.
As a youngster, I was always amazed at pictures of colourful trains on the sub-Continent that carried passengers on the roof and hanging on the outside. I wondered how they could all stay on.
Little did I know that they were actually a glimpse into the future at my regular daily commutes.
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