Article: Train driver snaps over Roar fans' singing

[SurfRail]

So people should stop supporting their team because 1 driver took offence at them showing passion for their club? What an absurd arguement.

No, you can show passion for a football team by attending a match and then going home, and BEHAVING. 

I doubt very much that the driver is a wowser, anti-football bigot or anything else demonstrating bad faith - or if he was, that that was his motivation.  Train crew need to concentrate, particularly in an environment where they have an open radio, the AWS, vigilance control and any number of other sounds they need to be monitoring constantly.  Far from "taking offence", I suspect he was being conscious of YOUR safety and his ability to perform his duties.

Not all passengers would have been attending the football either, and being somebody who frequently travels on football specials because they happen to appear in the timetable heading back to Nerang, I am often one of those people.  I don't particularly need to have the relative merits of 2 sporting teams rammed down my throat for 70 minutes, particularly if I have been working all day.

If people don't feel like playing nice, then they can drive down to Varsity Lakes, park, and catch the train from there for the 5 minute trip up to the stadium precinct.  Car = sealed environment with as much noise permitted as possible (before the driver starts experiencing the same issues as the QR driver due to noise).

This sort of situation is not limited to football.  Far the worst experience I have ever had on a QR service (worse than getting into shouting matches or near to fisticuffs with ferals on the Beenleigh line, which has occurred more than once), was when I was returning home from Brisbane in 2008 in the early afternoon and it just happened to be World Youth Day.  The train was packed full of Catholic Noumeans singing songs and chanting about how great God is, at the top of their lungs, in French, and with guitar accompaniment, for the WHOLE TRIP HOME.  This was in an SMU220 series, so it is possible the cab was a little better insulated (or the driver had tuned it out, not everybody is the same).

Being somebody with eardrums, I very nearly punched somebody to make a point, but I have good manners. 

[meh]

In response to happy train guy

Mate, once again, you do not have full visability over a 6 car train or any internal communication between the driver, guard and train control.

I've already acknowledged this fact many times, why is it constatly brought up? Im only talking about the car i was in, which happened to be the front car. If there were issues in the back car somebody else may be able to shed light on them.

loud singing would have drowned out the noise of anyone hitting the wall/door

I don't disagree with that, however, after the initial warning and the driver stopping the train just after leaving Robina the noise level dropped considerably. I was down one end of the train -opposite end to where the people singing where- and I couldnt really hear them.

Fact is they completely overeacted to 10 or so young kids standing up singing the odd song or two, and their over-reactions meant people had to find alternate methods home from the city due to missing connections.

[meh]

response to surfrail

I doubt very much that the driver is a wowser, anti-football bigot or anything else demonstrating bad faith

Where did I say this, don't put words in my mouth. I just said he overeacted to the incident. The main stream media on the other hand are anti-football bigots.. but thats another story for a completely different forum.

Not all passengers would have been attending the football either

This one im 99.9% sure on, and you're incorrect. All I saw on the platform were people who had attended the game. How can I be so sure? Well, just about all of them were wearing Brisbane Roar jerseys, so unless a flash mob of people suddenly appeared in Robina id say thet were at the game.

If people don't feel like playing nice, then they can drive down to Varsity Lakes, park, and catch the train from there for the 5 minute trip up to the stadium precinct.

The way those translink dopes opperate things for games down on the Coast, thats not actually a bad idea. Still, if translink/qld rail are going to encourage people to use their service, they should have enough trains running to meet demand. I maintain that if there wasn't such a long wait then this incident wouldn't have happened, given the restlessness of people having to wait an hour on an overcrowded platform.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Not all passengers would have been attending the football either

This one im 99.9% sure on, and you're incorrect. All I saw on the platform were people who had attended the game. How can I be so sure? Well, just about all of them were wearing Brisbane Roar jerseys, so unless a flash mob of people suddenly appeared in Robina id say thet were at the game.

Once again, the issue of your visability comes into play What the eyes see, the ears hear, the mind believes. It might be easy to assume that everyone is from the game because the majority are wearing the same attire but Robina and Nerang are still used at night. If it wasn't then no trains would run on the Gold Coast line at night. I know as I've been on quite a few of the ex-event trains as a basic travelling passenger.

All of this is simply something the media have blown way out of the water for a quick headline. Yes, the police might have been there in force but they (QR/QPS) could be in a position not to disclose why there was a large presence available in the area which only fuels the fire for the media and anyone without knowledge of the activities that are usually undertaken on the railways day in and day out. Its just another day imho.

[petey3801]

This is really starting to annoy me. TRAINCREW DO NOT CALL THE POLICE! We do not call emergency services at all. We advise Control of the situation and request whatever assistance we deem is required and Control takes it from there.

Direct sequence of events.

-Train leaves Robina station
-Passengers begin to sing
- Driver gets on intercom saying stop or i'll contact the Police
- Passengers keep singing
- Driver stops train, says 'you think im joking' then starts driving again
- Passengers stop chanting at this point, but a minority keep going.
- Train delayed at Helensvale as Police board train.

I don't see what the point is here? A large number of people did not comply with the first request of the traincrew, smaller group of people continue after second request. Police intercept train at Helensvale. Where is the problem with that??

Just because you didn't see people baashing on the crew door etc or swearing etc. in the other set of the train doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I said more or less that in my post above 

No, you implied that because you could no longer see/hear it happening, it wasn't happening. Something you continue to imply in later posts, such as:

I don't disagree with that, however, after the initial warning and the driver stopping the train just after leaving Robina the noise level dropped considerably. I was down one end of the train -opposite end to where the people singing where- and I couldnt really hear them.

Fact is they completely overeacted to 10 or so young kids standing up singing the odd song or two, and their over-reactions meant people had to find alternate methods home from the city due to missing connections.

.
Once again, who says they were only in the first car???

Hopefully it might mean those kids might think twice in coming years before doing stupid crap like a large amount of people around today.

So people should stop supporting their team because 1 driver took offence at them showing passion for their club? What an absurd arguement.

Where in Gods' name did you come up with that?!? Show exactly where I said anything even remotely like that, ANYWHERE! It was a general statement about how a large amount of society acts in public spaces, around the Railways in particular. I don't care what sporting club anyone barracks for, i've got my team(s), it's nothing out of the ordinary. I, however, am able to behave appropriately while doing so, much like most other supporters. Cheer at the game, settle down while travelling to/from the game. It's really not that hard.

Once again, if the people in question had simply complied with the request of the driver and toned things down a bit, none of this would have happened. As for the amount of Police at Helensvale, if it was directly in response to this incident (there could have been Police/TOs there already doing ticket checking operations etc.), after hearing of the problems that were had at the game itself, I can't blame the Police dispatcher for sending a large amount of officers there to quickly diffuse any situation that was occuring.

I doubt very much that the driver is a wowser, anti-football bigot or anything else demonstrating bad faith

Where did I say this, don't put words in my mouth. I just said he overeacted to the incident. The main stream media on the other hand are anti-football bigots.. but thats another story for a completely different forum.

Wow, Pot: Meet Kettle! That was nowhere near as bad as the words you put in my mouth! At least your statement had some sort of connection to what SurfRail said!

Not all passengers would have been attending the football either

This one im 99.9% sure on, and you're incorrect. All I saw on the platform were people who had attended the game. How can I be so sure? Well, just about all of them were wearing Brisbane Roar jerseys, so unless a flash mob of people suddenly appeared in Robina id say thet were at the game.

What a load of utter crap. There is nowhere on Robina platform that you can see anymore than around half(?) the platform at any one time. So unless you were constantly running around checking to see how many people were on the platform and not wearing a Football jersey, you have no idea just how many people boarded the train that were not from the game. At that time of night the trains generally have a couple dozen or so people on board after departure from Robina. Also, a fair amount of people who attended the game would more than likely have preferred a nice, quiet ride back home. Just because they're fans, doesn't mean they want to be loud and roudy.

The way those translink dopes opperate things for games down on the Coast, thats not actually a bad idea. Still, if translink/qld rail are going to encourage people to use their service, they should have enough trains running to meet demand. I maintain that if there wasn't such a long wait then this incident wouldn't have happened, given the restlessness of people having to wait an hour on an overcrowded platform.

There probably should have been an extra service, but there wasn't. That gives people absolutely NO RIGHT to completely IGNORE the requests from traincrew to behave appropriately. As I keep saying, if the people in question (not just the people Meh saw) had complied with the original request from the traincrew to calm down, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. There is noone to blame but themselves for the situation.