I think DOO does have to be questioned in this scanario (which will be far from unique). When I say DOO - I mean only the driver on board with no other available member of staff to assist the driver emergency, whether this be a guard, revenue protection or any other title you care to give them.
The driver clearly has a number of defined responsibilities to carry out under the rule book requirements. In a predictable and controlled situation I have no doubt that the duties of the driver and the workload presented are manageable and do not compromise safety of the train, its passengers or indeed the safety of the train driver themselves - that is obvious or the rules wouldn't be as they are. What I am less convinced about (and no doubt this has been argued long and hard when setting the original rules governing DOO) is what happens when less / unpredictable events occur that add significantly to the drivers and signallers workload and communication (or indeed if the driver is incappacitated but that is another argument).
I think the scenario presented here which is a failed train requiring assistance AND partially in a tunnel is standard stuff that just takes careful mangement and time to arrange the necessary course of action. Assisting a train situated in a tunnel requires additional precautions covered by Rule Book.
I would summarise this as; identification of fault, communication with signaller, protection of train, identify assistance required, identify assisting train, passengers information and management of passengers post event. Recovery plan of action. The driver and signaller will be at the forefront of this with control (TOC/NR) and others also involved. So plenty of activity required and clearly an event requiring frequent communication between driver and signaller to establish precise details of the present situation and the planned course of action.
Then you throw in unpredictable events - e.g. the behaviour and consequent actions of passengers.
I think it entirely understandable that after so many hours with little / no idea of what is going to happen and perhaps more importantly, when something positive is going to happen, other 'leaders' emerge. I call them 'leaders' by that I mean people who will naturally attempt to take control of their situation in a vacuum of other leadership / direction or indeed just 'hotheads', perhaps acting out of character because of the distress they or others around them may be suffering. As has been stated elsewhere in this thread railway safety is not going to be at the forefront of their minds (if indeed they are ever capable of understanding rail safety risks). Once signs of genuine distress among the the less resilient passengers starts to emerge, these 'leaders' will become apparent in suggesting solutions to alleviate distress. It only takes one to suggest an idea which if supported (or indeed not challenged) by those around will quickly gain support and lead to action.
Rationale I would suggest does not play an important part as any action to alleviate genuine distress will trump percieved safety rationale in a crisis (especially if the percieved risk of their action is small / negligable. The conversation between one passenger and a few others held on one of the You Tube videos about walking along the track between the train and the wall with cable route trunking at head height, all the tripping hazards and limited clearance between train and cable route ably illustrates this. Although the doors were opened to reduce the temperature there was clearly a next step of action being considered by some.
To his credit the driver appears to have recognised the growing distress to passengers and the need to manage this by taking controlled action in opening the 'emergency' ventialtion windows and shutting the doors without antagonising the passengers who have already demonstrated a need to 'take control'. Probably helped by British 'stiff upper lip' attitude despite the situation.
What happend after when clearance of the failed train was attempted is clearly the subject of the announced enquiry by RAIB.
It can be reasonably SPECULATED that further doors were opened by passengers to alleviate their distress, presumably after the driver had returned to his cab. It is also clear that some passengers took it upon themselves to leave the train. No doubt hurd mentallity played a part and added to the numbers of people who followed onto the track but the percieved level of discomfort being suffered clearly outweighed any percieved understanding of the dangers they faced by exiting the train despite what us rail folk like to think.
We (us railway people) can clearly see the dangers of this action and the futility of it which only added to the problems being managed, but that would be a failure to recognise and attempt to understand the behaviour of passengers caught up in a distressing (physically and emotionally) incident such as this, therefore I feel that RAIB should include a study of this action in their enquiry.
Moreso, the actions of passengers pushed beyond their individual limits clearly contributed to the time taken to resolve the incident and also to the workload of those who were managing the incident - primarily the driver of the failed and assisting trains and the signaller and their supervisor.
My concern about DOO is in this situation, is the workload (predicted and unpredicted and largely unsupported at the point of incident) expected to be performed by those staff involved. Is it reasonable for the limited amount of staff at the scene and are the consequences understood and tolerable?
By definition there would be significant time to resolve the original routine but complex incident, plus a potential for magnification of the incident and therefore time due to behavioural factors as happened here. The managing of the event potentially getting beyond a reasonable expectation for those at the scene to manage and thus creating a potentially significant safety hazzard for all involved.
RAIB will also be looking at the train systems and incident managment processes that lead to the alleged movement of the train with some of it's doors open. I hope that whatever comes out of their investigations they also look at the workload being undertaken by the staff when considering their findings.
This won't be the last time an incident of this nature occurs that's for sure.
The recent DOO incident was north of Kings Cross wasn't it, so presumably it's overhead power supply there, but I agree with DarloRich that you certainly wouldn't want to be having to avoid stepping on the third rail if de-training in the London Bridge area!
