Train firm puts on taxi service for exam pupils

A rail firm has set up a temporary taxi service to ensure GCSE and A-level pupils get to their exams on time after it cancelled hundreds of trains.

The under-fire rail firm Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) said in a staff briefing sent out in early June that the firm would be providing taxis and buses in "key locations" to support students and "stabilise the service".

It came after hundreds of GTR services were cancelled to deal with a new train timetable that caused chaos on lines across the whole of the UK.

Many pupils are sitting GCSE and A-level exams this month, and many of them usually depend on trains to get them to school. The disrupted and cancelled GTR services could have resulted in them missing exams.

In the letter leaked to the BBC, the firm – which runs Great Northern, Thameslink and Southern – said that the taxi scheme will run until the end of June.
 

It came after hundreds of GTR services were cancelled to deal with a new train timetable that caused chaos on lines across the whole of the UK.

The move comes after the GTR boss Charles Horton admitted that he has actually been delayed by his own trains in the past, and said "some trains have run on time and others haven't. I'm sorry about that".

The new timetables saw the timings of every train changed, in a shakeup said to be the biggest in the UK.

Last year a 15-year-old work experience student from south London – called Eddie – was left in charge of Southern Rail's Twitter account for one day, causing a Twitter storm of the firm’s followers asking him fun “would you rather” questions, as well as asking him about football, video games and his exams.