Lincolnshire man to appear in new Channel 5 documentary series: Tom O’Boyle, a signaller for Network Rail

Monday 20 Mar 2017

Lincolnshire man to appear in new Channel 5 documentary series

Region & Route:
| Eastern

Tom O’Boyle, a signaller for Network Rail in Claypole, appears in a new documentary series which goes behind the scenes of the rail industry.

The show follows railway workers on the East Coast Main Line as they run the railway, deal with major incidents and help passengers at various stations.

In tonight's episode, Tom, who is from Boultham and has worked for Network Rail for seven years, is filmed as he carries out his duties as a signaller.

We watch Tom as he controls train movements and level crossing barriers to allow trains to pass over them safely and protect the public.

He said: “Safety is the most important aspect of my job. I’m tasked with making sure that trains have a safe path to travel along and that members of the public are protected from trains at level crossings.

“We work really hard to get people where they need to be on time. When a disruptive incident occurs, we look at lots of different ways to make up the time and reduce delays for passengers.

“I hope the documentary will be a real eye opener and show people all that goes in to keeping the railway running. There are quite a lot of urban myths about the railway, so it would be great to dispel some of those.

“I haven’t really told many people that I am going to appear in the series, so I think they might get a shock when they see it!”

The third episode of Inside King’s Cross: The Railway airs tonight on Channel 5 at 21:00

If you miss it, you can catch-up online.

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About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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