Southern Railways

Starting of the new blog with for me a company which has done well.

SOUTHERN RAILWAYS stand up and take a bow.

Southern are my local rail company and I'll be honest my husband uses the train regularly to get to work but I have images of old when the trains are smelly, dirty grotty things. I telephoned Southern on Sunday to ask how I how/if I would be able to get onboard the train at my local station and was told "No". Oh dear....."So what happens?" "Does someone get me a ramp then?" Now I do believe if I hadn't of pressed the matter I wouldn't of been offered this but I did press and I was offered a taxi to take me to nearest station that could get me onboard.

I was told by the cab driver that this system was open to abuse by some and as usual you hear the story of 'one' who ruins it for the large proportion of disabled people who need the service. It seems there are many stations on the network which cannot be used and so therefore Southern would rather spend money on cabs for their disabled customers to get them from A to B rather than dealing with the cross fire afterwards - Except only part of the disabled market will know about this rule? If you do not phone up the dedicated assisted services department then you will not know the handy, helpful, tips will you?

But let us not knock Southern because at least they are trying and there are many companies who are not trying at all - More on those later!