Aviemore incident 29/9/23

[DarloRich]

At least this looks like a minor incident and I am sure i saw the two people injured have been released form hospital so that is good news.

Presumably some one just dialled 999 and reported a train crash without giving details of the extent of damage or number of injuries?

This looks as though all that was required was an ambulance for the two that were slightly injured.

An over the top response just takes resources away from other incidents which may well be much worse.

No wonder the emergency services get stretched at times.

999 which service do you require?
Fire Brigade. There has been a train crash at Aviemore. One of them is a steam train. People have been injured. Don't know how many but 2 are in a bad way, it is a right mess............
OK, if you are in a safe place stay there. Emergency services are on the way

What do you expect them to do? Send a bloke out on a pushbike to asses the situation? You also have a large potential explosion on your hands if the boiler is damaged.

If I witnessed, or came across an accident I would try to give as much information as possible to enable the emergency services to make an informed decision.

that is great if you have the knowledge of trains or oil tankers or aeroplanes. If you don't, then what.................

You get the emergency service on the way and let the experts sort things out. If they don't need 8 engines the commander on site will send them away

 

[skyhigh]

If I witnessed, or came across an accident I would try to give as much information as possible to enable the emergency services to make an informed decision.

I think who ever makes the call should try to be as informative as possible. Mention a train crash and people think of carriages strewn all over the place and multiple casualties.

How do you know what was/wasn't said on the call?

If there's nothing else going on it's not much hassle to send assets that aren't in use to a potential incident. If something comes in the meantime they can divert those assets or redeploy them when found that they're not needed.

 

[cf111]

If I witnessed, or came across an accident I would try to give as much information as possible to enable the emergency services to make an informed decision.

I think who ever makes the call should try to be as informative as possible. Mention a train crash and people think of carriages strewn all over the place and multiple casualties.

The most important thing is that the call is made as quickly as possible and help summoned forthwith. It's far easier to scale back an over provision of resources than it is to scale-up an underprovision.

 

[The Puddock]

I think who ever makes the call should try to be as informative as possible. Mention a train crash and people think of carriages strewn all over the place and multiple casualties.

You may find that Police Scotland notified the SF&RS as part of their standard cascade protocol for a railway collision. Once a member of the public dials 999 to request assistance (presumably in this case to summon an ambulance), which services actually attend and what resources they bring with them is out of their hands. The police control room takes charge of informing and escalating things between services.

 

[John Luxton]

999 which service do you require?
Fire Brigade. There has been a train crash at Aviemore. One of them is a steam train. People have been injured. Don't know how many but 2 are in a bad way, it is a right mess............
OK, if you are in a safe place stay there. Emergency services are on the way

What do you expect them to do? Send a bloke out on a pushbike to asses the situation? You also have a large potential explosion on your hands if the boiler is damaged.


that is great if you have the knowledge of trains or oil tankers or aeroplanes. If you don't, then what.................

You get the emergency service on the way and let the experts sort things out. If they don't need 8 engines the commander on site will send them away

I think most people whether they are knowledgeable about a particular form of transport or not can make a reasonable assessment.

It is quite clear from the photos that there has not been a major incident everything is up right for a start. One wouldn't even describe this as a crash, as someone else commented it was a hard shunt.

As for assessing situations some Ambulance services have fast response cars, they certainly do round my way, which go out ahead of ambulances to assess the situation and often arrive before other emergency services.

I am talking about resource management sending too many units out when not needed might mean they are not available somewhere where they are needed.

You may find that Police Scotland notified the SF&RS as part of their standard cascade protocol for a railway collision. Once a member of the public dials 999 to request assistance (presumably in this case to summon an ambulance), which services actually attend and what resources they bring with them is out of their hands. The police control room takes charge of informing and escalating things between services.

I have recently watched a number of episodes of "Coastguard" on Channel 5 which includes emergency calls. Their operators seem to engage the caller to give as much detail as possible to build up a picture of what needs to be done. They do not appear to have a standard procedure. It appears a more logical way of doing things rather than a one size fits all response.

 

[The Puddock]

They do not appear to have a standard procedure.

I would suggest looking up JESIP (the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Program).

 

[357]

To all the people saying the fire service overreacted - if someone hadn't been noticed initially who was getting on or off when the collision happened and was stuck under the train, I'm sure they would have appreciated the fire service preparing for the worst.

I've dealt with seven incidents where a person was hit by a train (spoken about up thread). The one time the woman was still alive and trapped under the train, I was very happy that we had more than one ambulance and a policeman on a push bike.

 

[Deepgreen]

Even the BBC has stepped up its journalistic hype-based race to the bottom, in pursuit of the Daily Mail, with their screaming headline "Flying Scotsman crash;...". Only a couple of lines into the story they say that it was actually a low-speed shunt/collision - so hardly a "crash", then. Sigh.

Flying Scotsman crash: Safety checks to be carried out on iconic locomotive

Two people were treated in hospital after the low-speed shunt at Aviemore Station in the Highlands.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[sloaneesq]

Quite surprised at their statement that three of the intial eight appliances remained on scene, I wonder why that was required. Does the catering equipment include a gas supply, I wonder?

Given the locomotive has a full time crew whenever the boiler isn't completely cool, I suspect the risk of an antique boiler exploding knocks it up the response charts slightly.

 

[Falcon1200]

Presumably some one just dialled 999 and reported a train crash without giving details of the extent of damage or number of injuries?

I would certainly hope that someone did indeed just dial 999, as soon as the incident occurred, and did not waste time before getting the emergency services to respond.

Even the BBC has stepped up its journalistic hype-based race to the bottom, in pursuit of the Daily Mail, with their screaming headline "Flying Scotsman crash

Actually, the report in today's Scottish Daily Mail is on Page 9 with the headline 'Flying Scotsman collision with train leaves five hurt', which does not seem inaccurate, or especially screaming.

 

[Towers]

Given the locomotive has a full time crew whenever the boiler isn't completely cool, I suspect the risk of an antique boiler exploding knocks it up the response charts slightly.

It is, of course, an “antique boiler” which is serviced, maintained and overhauled to very strict standards! It isn’t straight from 1923!

 

[Deepgreen]

I would certainly hope that someone did indeed just dial 999, as soon as the incident occurred, and did not waste time before getting the emergency services to respond.



Actually, the report in today's Scottish Daily Mail is on Page 9 with the headline 'Flying Scotsman collision with train leaves five hurt', which does not seem inaccurate, or especially screaming.

No, I meant the BBC's headline was.

 

[Sun Chariot]

It is, of course, an “antique boiler” which is serviced, maintained and overhauled to very strict standards! It isn’t straight from 1923!

I think FS had a completely new boiler, not that many years ago. Plus, as you say, all the boiler overhauls (and swaps?) during its LNER-BR ownership

 

[GusB]

I think most people whether they are knowledgeable about a particular form of transport or not can make a reasonable assessment.

It is quite clear from the photos that there has not been a major incident everything is up right for a start. One wouldn't even describe this as a crash, as someone else commented it was a hard shunt.

As for assessing situations some Ambulance services have fast response cars, they certainly do round my way, which go out ahead of ambulances to assess the situation and often arrive before other emergency services.

I am talking about resource management sending too many units out when not needed might mean they are not available somewhere where they are needed.

While we expect that the emergency call handler would ask reasonable questions to try to assert exactly what had happened, we cannot assume that the person making the call was acting in a calm and rational way. Unless a recording or transcript is released, we'll never know. We don't know who made the call, nor do we know exactly what was said. Was it a member of the train crew, a member of staff or volunteer from the railway, a member of the public (or a hysterical enthusiast)?

It's possible that several emergency calls were made, in which case it may have appeared that the incident was much worse than it turned out to be. As others have said, it's better to over-react and scale down afterwards than to attend with minimal resources and find it's much worse.

I think you're making far too much out of this.

 

[midland1]

I see on Metro's webb site they show a pic. of a GNER HST !

 

[The_Train]

I see on Metro's webb site they show a pic. of a GNER HST !

Not as bad as an overseas news agency who used a photo of the Stonehaven crash to report on this incident involving FS

I'm sure for those involved and injured it was a pretty scary experience, and thankfully those who went to hospital were quickly discharged, but the sensationalism that came from this has been ridiculous from news agencies. The need to get people to click on a story and the use of "click bait" headlines is getting worse and worse by the day and probably not helped by some enthusiasts on social media wanting this to be a bigger issue than it was to suit their agenda against the operation of FS

 

[Bikeman78]

Sadly much worse did happen on the roads today and to be fair was widely reported.

I’ve seen a heavy shunt like this at Bristol Temple Meads in the 1980s, where a class 47 pushed an engineers train several metres and knocked the driver of another 47 at the other end to the floor of their cab, but which didn’t even result in the train being cancelled!

I've seen a 2EPB ram another one hard enough to move it slightly. The shunter attached the pipes, shut it down and walked off. I've no doubt it ran as booked on the Monday morning. Of course, no one was injured in that example.

 

[dakta]

Yahoo publishing a Herald scotland article article 'Tourist gives eye-witness account of aftermath of Flying Scotsman crash' (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/tourist-gives-eye-witness-account-114523962.html)

it's not really worth the time to unpack:

Lewis Smith travelled up from Glasgow and was surprised to see emergency services outside the station.

He said: "We arrived here quite late and so we took a walk into Aviemore to get something to eat.

"We passed by the station and saw the Flying Scotsman and a fire engine at the platform.

"We decided to come back to see what was happening after getting food.

"At around 8.30pm we came back to the station and got some photos of the engine.

"There didn't seem to be anything wrong apart from all signals on the mainline being set to red but I didn't really take much notice.

"When we got back we got a phone call from a friend asking if we had seen the accident.

"We didn't know anything was wrong until we checked the news."

So basically eye witness account to news is basically, we weren't there at the time, when we got there we saw sod all, someone rang us to say there was in fact more than sod all so we ourselves had check the news which confirmed the latter that concludes our eye witness account

I'd be a bit critical but I think my expectations too high. My local rag the huddersfield examiner sent a reviewer to the merrie england coffee shop the other week - whilst this may sound boring it had grounds for being a decent review of a speciality coffee shop but there was a plot twist because in the article the reviewer admitted they'd had a coffee already that morning so they went for a fizzy drink instead, and they reviewed that.

hee hee hee what a world

 

[Bikeman78]

Given the locomotive has a full time crew whenever the boiler isn't completely cool, I suspect the risk of an antique boiler exploding knocks it up the response charts slightly.

Boiler explosions are very rare. Even at Harrow, none of the locomotive boilers exploded.

 

[Lockwood]

Wrt the fire response and call collection by the coastguard, the fire service will have a PDA, Pre determined attendance, as part of their response. CAD, computer aided dispatch, will recommend resources to meet that requirement. Their CAD may be set up to have Rail Incident = 8 pumps, or potentially X amount of cutting gear and Y amount of BA equipment that would equate to 8 fire engines.

The coastguard have a main call collection form and then a set of secondary forms that are derived from the incident type selected (ie a Person In Water form, an Environmental Incident form...) and there are questions on those forms relevant to the incident type.

Ambulance systems may use ProQA or similar to form AMDPS, Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System, responses. These are driven by a set of Key Questions that act as a logical flowchart from the initial call type (and why you hear call handlers on TV ask the same question again and again - they cannot progress until that KQ is answered)

Police... I don't know anything about UK police call handling.



Disclaimer: my day job is developing CAD systems for various emergency services in various countries. Views are mine and not that of anyone else.

 

[SteveM70]

We sent eight appliances to the scene, where firefighters worked to support partners.

Three appliances remain at the scene.”

Quite the response!

Presumably some one just dialled 999 and reported a train crash without giving details of the extent of damage or number of injuries?

"What can you see?"

"Its difficult, there's smoke everywhere"

 

[MadCommuter]

Aviemore is reasonably remote too. Maybe 1 appliance stationed in Aviemore? So any others are going to have to travel, so in case you need them, get them on their way quickly.

 

[Cowley]

I think FS had a completely new boiler, not that many years ago. Plus, as you say, all the boiler overhauls (and swaps?) during its LNER-BR ownership

No it’s never had a “new” boiler. It has at various times run with an original A3 boiler or a slightly modified A4 boiler (which I think is the one that’s in it now maybe..?).

The A1 (Tornado) is the only ER/LNER designed pacific that’s had a brand new boiler, but that’s because the entire machine was brand new.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Ah, thanks for the insight. When it had its full stripdown and rebuild at Southall years ago, I thought it took a new boiler.

 

[Cowley]

Ah, thanks for the insight. When it had its full stripdown and rebuild at Southall years ago, I thought it took a new boiler.

Of course I’m now staring at the screen, hoping that I was right.

 

[Bill57p9]

View attachment 1000008985.mp4Disclaimer: I have been passed this on WhatsApp so cannot verify authenticity, though it looks very much like Aviemore, Flying S.
cotsman and the Royal Scotsman to me.

Apologies, I am not aware of the original source of the video, which appears to show Flying Scotsman backing on to the Royal Scotsman stock at Aviemore rather quickly resulting in a hard shunt

 

[TrainsToday]

looks very much like Aviemore, Flying Scotsman and the Royal Scotsman to me.

I would agree with you there. The pictures that have been circulating on the media also show the Scotsman in a similar final position.

 

[Rick1984]

sent a reviewer to the merrie england coffee shop the other week - whilst this may sound boring it had grounds for being a decent review

Pun intended?

 

[TheHSRailFan]

cannot verify authenticity

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Looking west toward the track so yeah that confirms that

 

[dakta]

Pun intended?

It wasn't but I'll let you have it
The petty things that grind ones gears ... another one is 'appliances', technically nothing at all wrong with the phrase but I can just imagine the fire brigade sending a couple of fridges, freezers and a microwave to help out in a crisis.

I know I need to grow up, but I'll resist for a bit yet.