Train Guard (United Kingdom and Australasia)
See also: Revenue Protection InspectorIn the UK, Australia and New Zealand, the person with ultimate responsibility for operation of a train is usually called the guard, a term that derives from stagecoach days.
Until the latter part of the 20th century, guards on passenger trains in these countries did not have routine responsibilities for ticket inspection or sale. Their jobs focused more on safe operation of their trains, timekeeping, handling parcels, and other consignments. A dedicated 'travelling ticket inspector' handled fare duties. In recent years, passenger train guards have been assigned more responsibility for on-train revenue collection and ticket inspection. Under British Railways, there were several grades of guard, depending on whether the guard worked on freight or passenger trains—and a purely operational guard grade worked freight and passenger trains without customer contact. When the Guard has significant customer contact, the position is usually classified as conductor-guard or conductor. Since British Rail, there have been a number of titles for a guard's grade but, with a few exceptions, all now perform some sort of customer-facing role.
On long-distance expresses, the conductor's title is sometimes enhanced to senior conductor, in line with the implied prestige of operating these trains. Historically, under British Rail, long distance intercity trains were normally worked by the most senior guards at the depot, hence the name senior conductor. Several more recent private UK passenger train operators have further renamed the senior conductor's passenger facing title to "train manager".
Read more about this topic: Conductor (transportation)
Famous quotes containing the words train, guard and/or kingdom:
“Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed
Lenin in a sealed train through Germany
Hsuan Tsang, crossing the Pamirs
Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free
starving high-country winter of their tribes.
Surrender into freedom revolt into slavery”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”
—James Baldwin (19241987)
“O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-filld Bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last Mornings draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seizd thy parting Soul, and seald thee his;”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?1649)