wrote in message
oups.com...
I visited Kensal Green a couple years ago during the week and the gates
were powered down and ticket office closed by the early afternoon. It's
quite clear Silverlink don't give a damn about the Metro franchise,
which presumably never produced the same financial return as their
County operations (and no wonder!), and which will disappear anyway
soon. On the New Year's Eve all night services at this station were
frustrated, not by the RMT, but rather a time switch which extinguished
all platform lights between 0200 and 0500! Clearly this was the usual
Silverlink overnight practice - i.e.the idea of entrusting this task to
a person, who might also check that the station is secure before
locking up, is completely alien to them. Then there other stations on
this section which are non-stopped for days due to defective OPO
monitors, faults which if on LUL property, would have normally been
fixed within hours (or platform staff provided). The quality of station
CCTV footage also speaks for itself, next-to-useless grainy images
which wouldn't have a hope of standing up in court! And am I right in
assuming that Silverlink's trains on the North London, West London and
Euston -Watford lines still carry guards, for if so, why also is there
never any attempt to carry out on-train ticket inspection?

They're not called Silverstink for nothing. The trains that go from
Richmond past Dalston (I forget where they terminate) never have guards on.
There's usually one grumpy looking unfortunate driver (I don't blame the
drivers, obviously), and that's it. I've seen one ticket inspection on the
train, and inspectors at the exit about 4 or 5 times at different stations
down the line. The ticket halls are usually closed at ridiculous hours, or
they don't have change or some other silly reason for them adding extra
angst to your journey.

dave

d wrote :
They're not called Silverstink for nothing. The trains that go from
Richmond past Dalston (I forget where they terminate) never have guards on.

North Woolwich or Stratford. And I think you mistyped "never" for
"always" - look in the back cab (it's not far from where you're
standing to get on, they're only 3-car units) and there'll be someone
operating the doors and ringing the bell. The guard doesn't do revenue
duties, largely because the stops are only 3-4 minutes apart so s/he
wouldn't be able to get back to the cab in time to work the doors. But
this is presumably why Silverlink don't care over-much about broken
OPO monitors - they're relevant to LUL trains only. Annoying in a
railway-fragmentation sense, but reasonable for SL.

There's usually one grumpy looking unfortunate driver (I don't blame the
drivers, obviously), and that's it. I've seen one ticket inspection on the
train, and inspectors at the exit about 4 or 5 times at different stations
down the line.

Yup, sounds about right. Therefore...

The ticket halls are usually closed at ridiculous hours, or
they don't have change or some other silly reason for them adding extra
angst to your journey.

....this bit isn't actually very angst-ful, since the penalty fares only
operate when you could have bought a ticket but didn't. Anyone know if
SL Metro guards are trained to sell tickets if you go to their cab and
ask them?

--
John Band
e: john at johnband dot org
w: www.johnband.org