In this article, you will read about my experience of losing a bag in the train station. I was on my way between Bristol and Swindon the other day. I did that horrible and quite frankly, a stupid thing of leaving a bag in a train station.  It happened as I was getting off the train at Swindon, 40 minutes later, when I realised I had forgotten it.

I spoke to the platform manager when I got off. He very kindly gave me a leaflet with a phone number on it. 

Straight away, I gave it a ring and was unfortunately connected to a call centre. The call centre is somewhere in the world that could only handle calls if the questions lend themselves to answers on a script.  The answer I kept getting was “Your bag is not on our system yet, please call back in 7 days”. 

Now, this bag had all my shirts in for the next few days for my business trip. So I needed it back straight away. I refused to be put off and got the next train back to Bristol. 

Next train was 20 minutes later…

Another 40 minute trip back to Bristol.

I was relieved!

When I walked through the door of the Lost Luggage office, I could see my bag waiting for me. Delighted I told the man behind the desk “That one’s mine!” and pointed to it. His response was that if I had been there five minutes earlier he wouldn’t have had to brake the zip to get in “for security”. He then took £3 from me as a bag handling fee and handed the bag over.

Astonished these things struck me.

Security Issues

The lock on my bag is designed by the TSA. The lock has a special key that allows authorised personnel such as airport staff to unlock the bag and so (in theory at least) all transport agencies should have a copy.

The guy on the desk had no idea what I was referring to. I would have been better off spending less on a bag and using a £1 padlock…

At no point did he ask me for:

• My name
• Proof of ID
• Check that I knew what was in the bag

I’m tempted to go and collect another random bag…

If I take the guy at his word and only five minutes earlier had he broken into my bag “for security”.

That means an unknown bag with unknown contents was in a busy train station for 95 minutes (over an hour and a half) before anyone checked my bag.

If I were a terrorist (and not a suicide bomber), for whom I can only assume the “security” checks are in defense of, that means I have a big window of opportunity…

The guy who claimed he broke into my bag appeared to be any regular security guard. Now I know appearances can be deceptive but if my assumptions are correct – he wasn’t a bomb disposal expert. So surely an attacker would just include a tamper detection mechanism…

I know the concept of security theatre isn’t new, but this doesn’t even leave me assured that “someone is doing something about my personal security”. Given that I’m pretty sure that the concept of obviously flawed security theatre isn’t new either, I’d like to know how we are going to get ourselves out of this hole.

Losing a bag in a train station is a situation that security officers should take it more seriously. Do not get me wrong. I was delighted when I found out that they kept my bag. But I would prefer if they had a better authentication system. They assumed that the bag was mine and they gave it to me.

Also, First Great Western – I think you owe me a new bag…

EDIT: National Rail tweeted me, politely letting me know that it is nothing to do with them. I checked and it turns out that they are right – it is First Great Western, the operators for the area.