Maxie Wade, 25, challenged racism after hearing a man swearing at another train passenger (Picture: Facebook)

You meet all sorts of people on the train – people with different ages, religions, races.

And it’s usually a pretty safe place to be.

Unless you encounter ignorant behaviour like this.

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Maxie Wade, 25, was travelling back to York after a party in Leeds on Sunday when a man further down the carriage started swearing loudly.


She quickly realised he was verbally attacking another man who was speaking with an accent from eastern or southern Europe.

The man was asking the passenger: ‘Are you a student who is going to f**k off back home when you’re done?’

And then started telling him that he voted Brexit and had lived in York ‘all my life’.

Maxie had been travelling back to York after a party in Leeds on Sunday when the incident occurred (Picture: Getty)

The victim, who was travelling alone, tried to ignore the man’s violent behaviour but he continued making racist comments.



Maxie knew she had to do something, so she walked down the carriage and challenged him.

When she said, ‘How dare you talk about people in that way?’, he responded, ‘Who rattled your cage, love?’, which only served to anger her even more.

She then said: ‘What makes you think you can talk to me in that way? And you don’t know this guy, you don’t know anything about his life, you know nothing.

‘He has as much right to be here as you do. It’s absolutely disgusting racist behaviour.’

This led to other passengers in the carriage applauding her, but she didn’t stop there.

She reported the man to a member of staff in First Class but was allegedly told she needed ‘to find the other conductor for that’ and ‘it’s not my job to get involved’.

Maxie, who works for the NHS in York, told YorkMix: ‘I never thought something like that would happen in York, because we voted Remain, it’s quite a progressive place.

‘It gives us all a bad reputation. I felt awful, it made me really upset.’

She added: ‘I have so many friends from overseas, and I wondered what would they think if they saw me and I just did nothing? I’d be absolutely ashamed of myself.’

A spokeswoman for First TransPennine Express told the site: ‘We do not tolerate this kind of behaviour.

‘A full investigation is taking place to get to the bottom of this matter.’

A BTP spokesperson said: ‘We take all reports such as this extremely seriously and won’t tolerate behaviour where someone is singled out because they’re different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey.’