Enter the Railway Ronin feat. Gareth Dennis
It's the free one!
We’re joined by friend of the show Gareth Dennis to discuss newly unveiled plans to close every ticket counter at every train station in England. Nothing else is going to be improved, of course, but we’ve envisioned some potential cost-cutting efficiencies: turning station guides into large human-sized braille dots, cutting the civil service down to just one guy that everyone gets mad at, and much more.
Check out Rail Natter here! https://www.youtube.com/c/GarethDennisTV
Comments (28)
BTW those guys who build IRL App have been convicted of fraud https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/27/founder-irl-social-media-fraud.html
We live in a soceity* *terms and conditions apply
The old milo is dying and the new voice struggles to be born. Now its the time for Monster (tm)
many rural train stops in Japan do not have manned ticket offices anymore, but conductors usually help in those cases (turns out having a person in some kind of box is paramount). but nearly unmanageable if you do have some kind of disability, since accessibility is a huge issue.
banished from the ravenna shogunate to build a more equitable onsen in a lagoon
Captain Tomplex
where our TF “puddle” merch? i can hardly fill this plain thermos with puddle water, that would be silly
Yay Gareth!
indeed
About the railway app: The swiss have an app which works fairly well. But then I'd advocate for socialist iphones. You slowly become a non-citizen if you do not have smartphone. And even then, in the best possible world, you cannot use the train if your privatised provider has a hiccup. Smartphones have become just big screens. Nothing it can do on its own.
Yeah I really like the CFF app and greatly appreciate that I can buy a public transit ticket for wherever I wind up visiting. But it also helps that you seem to pretty much always have at least 4G signal wherever you are on CFF trains
As an American, I cannot for the life of me imagine a non-American looking at our healthcare system or car-based infrastructure and thinking, "Yes. I want my country to be like that."
Whoever drinks monsters should see to it that he does not in the process become a monster
FYI - listened (or tried to) listen to the VOD mentioned in the episode. The explosion sound effect is way, way, way too loud.
"Are you disabled? Don't be!" - I nearly fell out of my wheelchair laughing at that one.
I'm a simple man, I see "feat. Gareth Dennis" in the episode title and I hit the like button
i tuned in for the hooting morons
A very good friend of mine lost both legs when the train doors trapped them as they tried to get off the train at a station where the ticket office had been closed. They would have died on the track if a civilian *outside the station* hadn't heard them and come to help + call the air ambulance. People will die because of this change. It's so grim.
Haaaaaaaaaallo, TF!
*to the tune of that YNW Melly song* I got Monster Energy on my mind.
Yay Gareth!
in terms of the agency staff, i worked that in the past on gatelines. we got 1 day training following a weeks online course. uniform was "wear black jumper with black trousers" and a lanyard that just said "ONTRAK" which means fuck all to literally any rail traveller. i used to get hi-vis from the station office to wear so people knew i worked there. ticket office was absolutely vital because otherwise, people come straight to the gateline with ticket machine issues - which we both aren't trained with and we can't leave the gateline without opening all the barriers. hourly pay was actually quite high comparatively to the salaried staff, but no guaranteed hours and borderline illegal sick pay and leave. most other ontrak staff were either bouncers or just looking for money - like me (though i am a railway nerd)
also to note - every gateline has to be manned at all times because those gates are powerful enough to hospitalise and probably kill people. they are a law unto themselves and do whatever they feel like, and reject maybe 20% of paper tickets, and any barcode tickets that have been scanned by guards on trains.
Yay Gareth!
Yay Gareth!
Yay Gareth!
Yay Gareth!
Yay Gareth!