More than 100 taxi drivers were called with no notice to take train passengers home after Avanti West Coast cancelled a Longton-Edinburgh service at Preston. This is how they felt.
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00:00 I'm at Preston train station today. I've come to speak to some of the taxi drivers who were
00:09 called to action at short notice on Monday night when the Avanti West Coast, they pulled
00:16 the train service at Preston, it was going from London to Scotland and they had to take
00:22 passengers by road all the way to places like Edinburgh, Carlisle, Kendal and Dundee.
00:28 My name is Mohammed Ayub and I've been a taxi driver for nearly 20 years now.
00:33 And so what happened on Monday night then? Did you get a message and you responded to
00:37 it?
00:38 Yeah, I got a message in the WhatsApp group saying all the trains were down, which I knew
00:42 about it, but I was invited for a meal somewhere. So I went for a meal, then I had a bit of
00:46 sleep and then 10.30 the phone was still going off. So basically I come out and I got a job
00:51 to Dundee.
00:52 And what was that like? Was that a long journey?
00:54 It was a long journey, four hours or just over four hours there, four hours back plus
00:59 an hour's break on the way.
01:02 How many passengers did you have?
01:04 Just one passenger because there was only one person going to Dundee.
01:06 And what was the atmosphere like then?
01:09 The atmosphere was really good because all the lads, they put their energy into it and
01:14 they look forward to these kind of jobs as well.
01:17 Yeah, and does it happen quite often then?
01:19 It does to be honest, every few months I think we end up going towards the north and sometimes
01:26 down south as well.
01:27 And is it quite well organised then when that happens?
01:30 Yeah, I think station manager Shirley Ross, she's always in touch with us and she's one
01:36 of the nicest persons you'll ever meet. So yeah, it's all good.