I think posters expectations are, as usual, unrealistic. There seems to be a view that the moment a trian comes to stand issues can be identified instantly, with a fix obvious and a defined timescale by which something will be done. The real world is different. You cant take a decision to de train, immediately, every train that comes to a stop. Even when you do take that decision ( and that is quite a way down the decision tree because, obviously, you want to get the train moving) it takes time to put all of the resources & equipment in place, devise a safe plan to get people off the train and to get them a place of safety, treat any medical issues, help those who aren't young and fit off the train etc etc.
I also wish posters would acknowledge that the railway is a dangerous place for real people and walking about on the ballast isnt, really, very much fun in high heels and dress shoes!
The same post went into detail about what factors (I believe) influence how long the railway has to do either 1 or 2 depending on the circumstances in play - and there are many. At Peckham Rye they attempted (and partially succeeded) in doing 1, and later did 2. We don't know what happened at North Pole in enough detail to know what was attempted, but it's clear that they did not successfully achieve either.
Was this the day that there was also a full Pendolino stopped at Camden that needed the passengers rescuing? There are only so many people to go around ( and i know what was done to rescue that Pendo)
Network Rail infrastructure has all of the above. Many of the station staff I deal with around London are PTS trained, indeed I was assisting one only the other day with arranging a fairly complicated line block in an area not so far from the one in this incident. Not that station staff are much use around North Pole (or within the few miles north of there towards the endless freight yards at Wembley), as there are very few local stations which have practical access to most of the running lines.
NR Mobile Operations Managers work jointly with BTP on the Emergency Intervention Units which regularly run on Immediate / blue-light response to urgent rail incidents. This happened with the incident in question.
There are also far more stringent Stranded Trains Risk Assessments than there used to be, although I’m not convinced the paperwork would have been needed anyway in this case, since the needs of the stranded train would have been painfully obvious to any controller with even a jot of knowledge about the West London Line.
Indeed. The issue is the available resource, the area that resource has to cover and the time it takes to move them around.
If the train companies don't have a risk assessment process around keeping the third rail live when there is a stranded train, then they are playing a very dangerous game - How long has the train been stranded, what sort of area, what is the weather, what is the loading, what sort of information has been given to the customers, etc. At anything more than 30 minutes in an urban area there is is a strong risk of customers taking action into their own hands, and even less time if it is a heavily loaded service in the summer. And as soon as the doors are opened by the customers, if the procedure isn't to shut off the power immediately then...
Anyone would think that that risk management was an unknown to the railway! The problem with turning of the 3rd rail is that it doesn't just take out 200 yards. It takes out a wide area meaning there are more trains and passengers impacted. The procedure is to shut of the power only when you have to because even with the power off passengers are safer on the train for the vast majority of the time.
Same at stations where departure boards are often hopelessly wrong when an incident has occurred. Like at Lancaster and Preston a couple of weeks ago when the wires were down. The platform boards where showing delayed "expected" times that were just silly. One train was shown as a delayed expected time of 15:27 yet it hadn't left Preston at 15:20 as per RTT. That was just one example of "expected" times continuously being changed or "expected" trains suddenly disappearing as cancelled minutes before their expected time. It just annoys people even more when they're being fed duff information.
They should just turn them off and go to manual announcements and only show trains that are running. They tend to do that at Milton Keynes because otherwise, due to the way the system works, you end up with confusing gibberish very quickly
I don’t think people commenting on here realise how large areas affected by isolations can be.
Switching the third rail off “just in case” would immediately strand all other trains in the immediate vicinity and indeed on many DC units - including the Electrostar family - would immediately remove air conditioning and toilet facilities from trains equipped with them due to “load-shedding”.
Lighting and PA equipment on all these services would also stop operating in short order once the batteries were drained.
The priority is always to get trains moving again and leaving current on is by far the best way to achieve this.
indeed - You turn the power off only when you have to for these reasons!
