Southern Rail actually thought this was a good tweet

It appears Southern Rail has not been having a great week.

On Tuesday a freight train broke down and the train sent to rescue it also stopped working, which caused delays on the line for the rest of the day.

The company found itself in hot water again this morning, when a Twitter campaign encouraging its customers to challenge the upcoming Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) strikes backfired.

Southern Rail tweeted the following, instructing its customers to tell RMT ‘how rail strikes make you feel’:

Southern Rail criticised RMT for opposing its ‘modernisation plan’ which, according to its website: guarantees jobs to 2021, introduces new trains on the network and on-board staff.

RMT responded to the planned changes with a press release:

This dispute has never been about money, it is about guaranteeing that there is a second, safety-critical member of staff on-board the current Southern rail services.

There is a ready-made solution to this dispute and that is based on the Scotrail deal that guarantees that second member of staff on all services with the safety competencies to deal with incidents like the recent landslip and derailment at Watford where the guards were crucial in averting a major disaster.

People began tweeting Southern Rail, in what was a bit of a campaign backfire...

They also referred to Southern Rail's Twitter feed as of late...

As well as the facilities on trains...

Others went so far as to accuse Southern Rail of inciting a 'hate campaign' against RMT:

A spokesperson for the RMT Union told indy100:

It’s not about pay; it’s about safety of the service. It’s about us standing up to a company that’s the worst performing transport operating company in Britain.

Our fight is to protect the quality of service [from this] basket case mad cap company.

 The public are overwhelmingly supporting of us, and we’re very grateful for the hundreds of messages of support we have received.

The RMT announced strike action from October to December last month.

Southern Rail did not immediately return a request for comment.

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