Man works overnight to return lost items on Sydney trains

Imagine the heartbreaking panic of losing your passport, wallet, cell phone and laptop the night before you have to board an international flight.

Luckily for her, the resident “fixer” at Central Station, night shift station attendant Reg Agher, was in charge of the case.

Time passed and with no trace of the bag on the Sydney Trains Lost and Found register, Reg told 9news.com.au, “At that point, I knew something had to be done.” .

Revealing a detective-like process for finding bags that could be almost anywhere, Reg first set out to identify which train a passenger was on when they lost their bags. .

“Our train location system showed that the train was being held at stables in Repington for the night,” Leg told 9news.com.au. Anyone at that time. ”

However, a phone call to Sydney Trains headquarters provided him with another night watchman to try in Leppington and to his surprise, he was able to speak to staff and someone looked into the train and picked up the phone. I advised him to call. He came back.

He told the young woman to go home and that he would contact her if the bag was found.

“I got a call around 3:30 a.m. saying that everything was intact and the bag had been found,” Reg said.

After arranging for the bag to be sent to the nearest station on the first train in the morning, Reg gave the good news to the owner of the bag at a relative’s house.

He told her that she could pick up the bag at Marylands Station around 7am.

“She cried out with joy and couldn’t thank me enough!”

What should I do if I lose something on the way to the airport?

This isn’t the first time Reg has helped passengers and quickly reunited lost items.

A station worker told 9News.com.au that two German backpackers arrived at the station office early one morning in “hysteria”.

“They were crying uncontrollably because they couldn’t speak to explain themselves,” he said.

The unfortunate backpackers were on their way to the international airport to catch a flight back to Germany in less than three hours when they realized they had left their bags on a bus outside of Sydney’s rail jurisdiction.

They had passports, airline tickets and wallets in their bags and, being new to Sydney, they didn’t even know which bus route they took or where they started in the city. His only clue was that they boarded the bus “next to the wharf.”

“I said to myself, ‘Good luck with this Reg!’”

Drawing on his network of colleagues, Reg said:

To my surprise, I received a phone call 30 minutes later telling me that not only had the bag been found, but that the bus to carry it would be arriving outside Central in about 40 minutes.

“Our German customers couldn’t believe what they were hearing and were crying with joy.

Reg said he met the bus in person and helped them catch the train to the airport after returning with their bags. He described the experience as “a very rewarding moment for me”.

Inside the country’s largest lost and found system

With 170 train stations and millions of daily trips, Sydney Trains finds misplaced items for 500 to 700 customers each week.

“We are working hard to reconnect owners with their possessions, and within 28 days, approximately 3,600 items have been found and returned,” Reg said.

Station support officers like Reg receive the usual personal items such as wallets, keys, opal cards and jewelry, or strollers, bicycles and musical instruments.

“It’s not uncommon to receive about 15 cellphone calls a day, and on rainy days, I sometimes find more than 50 umbrellas,” he said.

Asked about the strangest and most valuable items registered on the Lost and Found Register, Reg said: I left it on the train. ”

On another occasion, he received “a woman’s bag with nothing in it except an envelope containing $10,000.”

But in the end, “no two days are the same in the office,” says Reg.

“That’s why I love my job.”