Passengers self-detrain from LO train 15 July 2019

Chris M · 30 Jul 2019

Bromley boy said:
Always?!

What about if people decide to egress after five minutes?

Well experience shows that they don't - unless they are adjacent to a platform in which case there is no issue with them being on the track. Even at Lewisham where the train was in sight of many passengers destination station they waited around an hour.

If you've been reading all the various things we passengers have been writing, you (the railway) will already know you need to think about the human factors and realise that it's not a question of simply expecting passengers to sit in a sardine can and trust that you're doing something they can't see and you've not told them about. They wont. You don't have a choice in this matter. There are things you can do to give you more time - principally by keeping the passengers supplied with accurate, honest, timely information that feels accurate, honest and timely. That doesn't just apply for train strandings either - if passengers are used to being treated like idiots and fobbed off with meaningless excuses they will have a lot less trust in what you tell them and so will be less inclined to wait onboard a crowded overheating train than if they are used to being treated like intelligent adults not mindless automatons.

I get that what I'm saying feels like arbitrary targets to you, but they aren't - look at what has actually happened in every instance of train strandings, not what you think should have happened or how you think passengers should behave. Learn from how they actually behaved because that is how they will behave in the future. It's no good whining about passengers self-detraining getting in the way of your perfectly formed plan. If passengers self-detrain then your plan and/or its implementation wasn't good enough. If it takes 40 minutes to even get someone to a train in a dense urban area (let alone then actually do something) then you need to either reorganise where your staff are starting from and/or employ more staff who are able to come to the aid of a train. Taking an hour and half to get someone to a train stranded in a remote rural area in a blizzard is good going. Taking 20 minutes to get someone to a train stranded yards from a major urban station on a sunny summer's day taking the piss.

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broadgage · 30 Jul 2019

I have lon

mmh said:
I suspect some of the people being blasé about walking on ballast never have. I did perhaps 3 times a week for years at a stile foot crossing until it was closed. I was young, able bodied and relatively fit, yet it was still awkward. And this was simply going directly across a simple two track line with no visible cables, let alone electrification. Rails are also higher than I think many people realise as they're rarely viewed close up.

I suspect that some passengers are getting blasé about walking on ballast because they HAVE done it before, or know someone who has, and found it less hazardous than the railway industry would have them believe.
I know several people caught up in the Lewisham incident, one of whom escaped and found the walk of a few dozen yards to the station to be relatively easy.
Almost no passengers in such situations believe the stories about the terrible dangers of fast moving trains. Especially when shielded by the stranded train. And as for conductor rails, a growing number of passengers are aware of these and know not to touch them.
And of course each additional stranding increases the number of passengers who have escaped, and have survived just fine.

The average passenger simply wont believe or accept that rescuing them is a hugely complex process requiring many different levels of management, and a "multi agency approach" that takes hours to arrange. "I could walk in a few minutes"

With the current trend towards "make them stand, pack them in" train designs without toilets, strandings need to be regarded as far more urgent.
Such cases are not "just another delay, get used to it" but should be considered as a public health or welfare emergency, with evacuation within an hour.

In the case of proper long distance trains, with WORKING air conditioning, and Working toilets, and not overcrowded, then the situation is far less urgent. These cases ARE "just another delay" They can be most annoying but are unlikely to be an emergency.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

Oh dear, so we’re off down the garden path again, are we...?

Chris M said:
If you've been reading all the various things we passengers have been writing, you (the railway) will already know you need to think about the human factors and realise that it's not a question of simply expecting passengers to sit in a sardine can and trust that you're doing something they can't see and you've not told them about. They wont. You don't have a choice in this matter.

Sorry, but if you’d been reading all the things we railstaff have been telling you passengers, you will see that we do understand the human factors. Let’s face it, we don’t want to be stuck on a boiling hot train between stations either. That’s why there are procedures in place to deal with these situations. I’m sorry if you feel they are inadequate by your own personal standards, but in 99% of train/infrastructure failure incidents they have been proven to work very well indeed.

Chris M said:
There are things you can do to give you more time - principally by keeping the passengers supplied with accurate, honest, timely information that feels accurate, honest and timely. That doesn't just apply for train strandings either - if passengers are used to being treated like idiots and fobbed off with meaningless excuses they will have a lot less trust in what you tell them and so will be less inclined to wait onboard a crowded overheating train than if they are used to being treated like intelligent adults not mindless automatons.

Oh god, how I wish that were true, but sadly it isn’t. Even if you do all you can to keep people informed there will always be those who take assumed incompetence on the part of the railway as their starting point. It’s generally these people who start trying to foment unrest on the train. Trust me, I’ve done all of those things when the signals all went black and I found myself stuck outside Hackney Downs, but I was still firefighting and lost a couple of passengers during the wait. Would you call me inept/incompetent/whatever...?

Chris M said:
I get that what I'm saying feels like arbitrary targets to you, but they aren't - look at what has actually happened in every instance of train strandings, not what you think should have happened or how you think passengers should behave. Learn from how they actually behaved because that is how they will behave in the future. It's no good whining about passengers self-detraining getting in the way of your perfectly formed plan. If passengers self-detrain then your plan and/or its implementation wasn't good enough. If it takes 40 minutes to even get someone to a train in a dense urban area (let alone then actually do something) then you need to either reorganise where your staff are starting from and/or employ more staff who are able to come to the aid of a train. Taking an hour and half to get someone to a train stranded in a remote rural area in a blizzard is good going. Taking 20 minutes to get someone to a train stranded yards from a major urban station on a sunny summer's day taking the piss.

I’m sorry, but you’re out of touch with reality. You may believe that it is unacceptable but that’s because you don’t understand precisely what is possible.

dtaylor84 · 30 Jul 2019

I’m sorry, but you’re out of touch with reality. You may believe that it is unacceptable but that’s because you don’t understand precisely what is possible.I’m sorry, but you’re out of touch with reality. You may believe that it is unacceptable but that’s because you don’t understand precisely what is possible.

It doesn't really matter what's possible. What matters is that if conditions get that bad, passengers will self-detrain.

Chris M · 30 Jul 2019

My entire point is that it should be possible and quite frankly needs to be possible. I haven't seen any evidence on this thread that the human factors have been understood. If it takes more than an hour to rescue passengers stranded within walking distance of a staffed station from a train that is upright and in the correct number of peices then that I'm afraid is incompetence on the part of the railway.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

broadgage said:
The average passenger simply wont believe or accept that rescuing them is a hugely complex process requiring many different levels of management, and a "multi agency approach" that takes hours to arrange. "I could walk in a few minutes"

The problem here is that we cannot assume that a sane, healthy-looking person will behave sensibly. Also, they are making assumptions that could be wrong. “It’s safe because the broken-down train is protecting me” cannot be relied upon because the assisting train is going to arrive on the same line as the failed one is sat on. The other issue, as I have already repeatedly said, is that the assisting train cannot approach the failed one while there are passengers out for a stroll.

broadgage said:
With the current trend towards "make them stand, pack them in" train designs without toilets, strandings need to be regarded as far more urgent.
Such cases are not "just another delay, get used to it" but should be considered as a public health or welfare emergency, with evacuation within an hour.

You’ll have heard the phrase “out of the frying pan, into the fire”...?

There seems to be an underlying current that these incidents take a long time to resolve by design. Can I please scotch this right here and now. These incidents became escalated into strandings due to passenger action. A straightforward failed train simply needs assistance so that the whole shooting-match can be moved to everyone’s benefit. This isn't simply a case of acting out some OCD’s procedural fantasy but about alleviating everyone’s discomfort and getting all the passengers on their way.

Taunton · 30 Jul 2019

The Pewsey HST event took the TOC six hours to recover the train. Full and standing. That's the sort of service you get if you don't leg it yourself.

Tim O'Toole said about the 7/7 (in 2005) evacuation of the whole Underground system :

"We evacuated 250,000 people out of our tunnels and trains during rush hour and not a single person was injured. That doesn't happen because of management intervention. That happens because people in the field are in control and understand what needs to be done. The thing that makes 14,000 people behave in that way is training and competence."

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/lessons-underground/article/668562

Obviously a skill that has been lost.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

dtaylor84 said:
It doesn't really matter what's possible. What matters is that if conditions get that bad, passengers will self-detrain.

Yes they will, which is why the railway has procedures in place to ensure their safety as far as is practicable.

However...

Passengers taking this action need to understand that they are acting entirely selfishly and delaying the arrival of help. Detraining between stations is counterproductive, dangerous and unhelpful.

Chris M said:
My entire point is that it should be possible and quite frankly needs to be possible. I haven't seen any evidence on this thread that the human factors have been understood. If it takes more than an hour to rescue passengers stranded within walking distance of a staffed station from a train that is upright and in the correct number of peices then that I'm afraid is incompetence on the part of the railway.

Then you, sir, are part of the problem. You’d rather turn a simple train failure and assistance into a full-blown evac simply for the purpose of satisfying some arbitrary quasi-NHS target. You’d rather expose passengers to greater health and safety risk and more than double the amount of time it takes to resolve a fairly simple train failure just so that you can tick a box to say that the railways are doing “something”.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

Taunton said:
The Pewsey HST event took the TOC six hours to recover the train. Full and standing. That's the sort of service you get if you don't leg it yourself.

One major incident does not undermine the principle. How many trains failed and required assistance within the last 12 months? How many of those were resolved within 90 minutes because the railways could get on with the job of getting you all moving again?

bramling · 30 Jul 2019

dtaylor84 said:
It doesn't really matter what's possible. What matters is that if conditions get that bad, passengers will self-detrain.

I do wonder if, over time, the railway will simply do some kind of risk assessment that says egress devices are no longer required due to the superior fire performance of modern rolling stock. There’s precedent for this - LU has never had egress devices, although the flip side of the coin is that their cabs can be used as an emergency exit by way of breaking glass.

bramling · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
Oh dear, so we’re off down the garden path again, are we...?

Sorry, but if you’d been reading all the things we railstaff have been telling you passengers, you will see that we do understand the human factors. Let’s face it, we don’t want to be stuck on a boiling hot train between stations either. That’s why there are procedures in place to deal with these situations. I’m sorry if you feel they are inadequate by your own personal standards, but in 99% of train/infrastructure failure incidents they have been proven to work very well indeed.

Oh god, how I wish that were true, but sadly it isn’t. Even if you do all you can to keep people informed there will always be those who take assumed incompetence on the part of the railway as their starting point. It’s generally these people who start trying to foment unrest on the train. Trust me, I’ve done all of those things when the signals all went black and I found myself stuck outside Hackney Downs, but I was still firefighting and lost a couple of passengers during the wait. Would you call me inept/incompetent/whatever...?

I’m sorry, but you’re out of touch with reality. You may believe that it is unacceptable but that’s because you don’t understand precisely what is possible.

The point about a small handful of people stirring up trouble with the rest is so true.

Recently I happened to pass by a station where staff were dealing with a lift stuck in its shaft, and due to overcrowding issues trains were non-stopping the adjacent platform. Because staff were busy dealing with the lift problem there weren’t many announcements going out. Naturally there had to be one individual going round causing trouble, inventing problems like “there’s a pregnant woman on the platform” and “people are dehydrating” (this wasn’t during the hot spell).

Pure troublemaking - and it’s these sorts of people who end up stressing out an incident, and quite often leading to something more serious going wrong. It’s notable that at Peckham Rye the driver was subjected to some degree of abuse.

Chris M · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
Then you, sir, are part of the problem. You’d rather turn a simple train failure and assistance into a full-blown evac simply for the purpose of satisfying some arbitrary quasi-NHS target. You’d rather expose passengers to greater health and safety risk and more than double the amount of time it takes to resolve a fairly simple train failure just so that you can tick a box to say that the railways are doing “something”.

This isn't some arbitrary target. It's what is about what is reasonable for actual people who live in the real world rather than railway world.
There is simply no acceptable reason why passengers stranded within walking distance of a station should have to wait that long for a resolution. If you can't or won't get the train moving before people self evacuate then your only choice is to organise an evacuation before people self evacuate. If you can't or won't do that then you have to accept that people will self evacuate. There is no other option. This is not a rabble rousing politician's answer it is a simple inescapable fact of life.
Passengers will wait only as long as they feel is reasonable in the circumstances - how long reasonable is depends on the circumstances and the railway has a limited amount they can do to extend it (information, opening windows on hot trains if the aircon has failed, redistributing people along the train if there are standees at one end and empty seats at the other, that sort of thing) but on a short distance service a short distance from alternatives in an urban area doesn't give you long. Despite the bleating, it is not the passengers that are being unreasonable here.
We don't want an evacuation - what we want is to get to our destination. If leaving the train seems to be the only option to do so in a reasonable amount of time then we will leave the train.

sheff1 · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
The other issue, as I have already repeatedly said, is that the assisting train cannot approach the failed one while there are passengers out for a stroll.

Underlining a word does not make it true. I have been in a situation where the assisting train approached the failed train from which some passngers had alighted and gone for a 'stroll'. The arrival of the assisting train was made perfectly obvious to those 'stollers' who were in its path and they just moved out of the way.

Whether what happened there is ideal is, of course, a completely different question to which the answer must be No, but it quite clearly can and did happen.

underbank · 30 Jul 2019

Why aren't fire and rescue services called when people are trapped on trains?

They're routinely called out when people are stuck in lifts, so what's the difference?

(Genuine question, not being goady!)

Taunton · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
One major incident does not undermine the principle.

OK then, Kentish Town. How many examples do we need?

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

Chris M said:
If you can't or won't do that then you have to accept that people will self evacuate.

It’s odd that the part of my post that you didn’t quote was the part in which I repeated that I accept that this will happen. Did you miss that bit? Will you now accept that passenger action actually made these situations worse, or is it just the industry that has to bow to your [ahem] “reasonable demands”?

There are many many areas in life where we have to accept that things might not perfectly match up to our expectations, whether that’s in our dealings with transport providers (and not just rail), healthcare providers, local authorities or whatever. Life is full of disappointments and rarely runs the way that “you” consider that it should. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

Organising to get people out of a train just so that they don’t take this action themselves is, at the risk of boring repetition, a more costly, more risky and more time-consuming business than leaving them safely tucked up inside the train no matter how unpleasant the atmosphere may have got. A controlled evac will be considered where it is necessary to deal with a situation, but it is a last resort that comes only if the train cannot be moved under any circumstances (e.g. it’s derailed).

sheff1 said:
Whether what happened there is ideal is, of course, a completely different question to which the answer must be No, but it quite clearly can and did happen.

Sounds like someone copped a blind-un. Bit of a risk, though.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

Taunton said:
OK then, Kentish Town. How many examples do we need?

Kentish Town was exacerbated by passenger action, so one to me I think. Thanks very much.

tony_mac · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
Kentish Town was exacerbated by passenger action, so one to me I think. Thanks very much.

It was exacerbated, but it wasn't handled superbly in the first instance either.

"contingency plans to control the risk of unmanaged passenger detrainment were not established and implemented in a timely fashion"
"key decisions were not made to define and implement plans to manage the circumstances. Other factors included informal communication using inappropriate channels, poor presentation of key operational information and ill- defined incident management processes."

If the conclusion is that the procedures are all perfect, and are being consistently correctly implemented, and the only problem is unruly passengers then nothing will change and these things will keep happening. Unless, maybe, you start keeping a few alligators in the cess...

bramling · 30 Jul 2019

sheff1 said:
Underlining a word does not make it true. I have been in a situation where the assisting train approached the failed train from which some passngers had alighted and gone for a 'stroll'. The arrival of the assisting train was made perfectly obvious to those 'stollers' who were in its path and they just moved out of the way.

Whether what happened there is ideal is, of course, a completely different question to which the answer must be No, but it quite clearly can and did happen.

I’ve got to say I can’t see many drivers (or incident responders) being at all comfortable with bringing up an assisting trains while there’s uncontrolled punters on the tracks.

And of course in DC-land at least by that time there would already have been an isolation implemented. No electrical controller is going to do a recharge if he knows there’s punters on the ground, at least not without some *very* specific and reliable assurances from site that things are being managed appropriately.

O L Leigh · 30 Jul 2019

tony_mac said:
It was exacerbated, but it wasn't handled superbly in the first instance either.

Yes of course, which is why I was very careful in choosing my language.

Things went wrong at Kentish Town anyway that had nothing to do with the passengers pulling egress handles and leaking out. Poor communication and unfamiliarity with the new traction on the route, etc, meant that this problem was always going to take longer than it ought. But having to constantly reset doors and egress handles (only for them to be pulled again as soon as the driver turned his back) together with people on the track made an already bad situation much worse.

...which is the whole point I’m trying to get across.

sprunt · 30 Jul 2019

O L Leigh said:
There are many many areas in life where we have to accept that things might not perfectly match up to our expectations

Not wanting to stand on a crush loaded train without toilets for an indefinite further period, having already been doing so for in excess of an hour is not expecting perfection.

gazzaa2 · 30 Jul 2019

Roast Veg said:
Certainly the publicity around this and the Lewisham incident may provoke further detrainments in the future as well, which might require a publicity campaign to remind people of the hazards associated with the live railway.

There are instances where passengers can prove to be much more patient, such as the incident near Corby about a month ago, where two trainloads of people stuck it out with no supplies on an HST for many hours - but they had toilets, were in the middle of nowhere, and it was beyond flooded outside!

If people are going to be stuck for a period of time then they need access to toilet facilities and drinking water.

coppercapped · 30 Jul 2019

'Self de-training' has been around for a long time and always causes delay. A quote from 43 years ago taken from Alan Williams' 'Inter-City diary' column in the August 1976 issue of Modern Railways:

I have long campaigned for better public communications on British Rail, particularly keeping trainbound passengers informed during long delays. But having witnessed the recent debacle on the Southern Region, I am beginning to wonder whether a passenger who is better-informed is necessarily better-behaved!

It was at the beginning of the evening peak when a down train dislodged and short circuited a section of conductor rail on the down through line between Berrylands and Surbiton. The close headway of trains at this time is such that at least two following trains had entered the 'dead' section before the New Malden signalman was alerted and could replace his normally automatic signals to danger and begin diverting trains onto the adjacent down local line.

It was immediately obvious to the railway staff involved — and indeed anybody with a modicum of common sense — that the delay would be lengthy especially for those on the trains marooned in the dead section. Despite some somewhat-defensive assertions to the contrary by some guilty-looking individuals, the majority of passengers on the trains involved were, admittedly somewhat unusually, swiftly informed of the situation and warned that the delay might be prolonged until rescue in the form of diesel traction could be organised.

So what did those well-informed commuters do? They promptly opened the doors and climbed out! First the headstrong few, then the lemming-like majority, out in their hundreds, oblivious of warnings from staff, onto tracks festooned with 750V conductor rails on which trains were still running at up to 90mph. Horrified railway staff at Surbiton, seeing the commuters casually strolling along the track, up the platform and through the barriers by the score, could do no more than hurriedly ensure that the power was shut off on the other running lines, thus inevitably converting what was, at worst, a bad delay into total chaos.

As one can imagine, these foolhardy commuters were not a particularly unique collection; as the bulk of the evening rush-hour service, train by train, was brought to a stand at signals on both through and local lines back towards London, more and more people decided to bale out, requiring additional sections of conductor rail to be isolated — in turn bringing more trains to a standstill, and so on!

Despite frantic last-minute diversions of longer-distance trains to other routes, notably via Richmond, Staines and Chertsey, the situation quickly snowballed back as far as Clapham Junction, where luckless passengers were being asked to detrain two hours after the original incident. Many of the passengers I spoke to seemed quite oblivious of the danger to which they had exposed themselves and others, and were instead bitterly complaining that BR was not busy organising buses to get them home!

The following morning, a special notice at Waterloo sternly admonished passengers for 'detraining from trains' (can one detrain from anything else?) outside stations without authorisation. And quite right too. One trembles to think of the carnage that would have ensued had an up Bournemouth or Portsmouth express ploughed into a gagle of stumbling commuters — people who would not, presumably, dream of wandering off down the centre lane of a 70mph motorway, or alighting on their own initiative from an aircraft delayed on the tarmac. So why is there such evident ignorance of danger on the railways? Which brings us back to the beginning, and the need for better public communication...

Mountain Man · 30 Jul 2019

FelixtheCat said:
Simply, the guard will be focused on giving the passengers information, keeping them informed etc. which leaves the driver to communicate with control, signallers etc. to work out exactly what to do. In times of disruption one person doing both is a tall order.

It depends. Personally I'd always choose to ask the TOC on Twitter than a Guard.

bramling · 30 Jul 2019

gazzaa2 said:
If people are going to be stuck for a period of time then they need access to toilet facilities and drinking water.

Just like they would if stuck for hours on a motorway... the difference there being there’s no one to blame for people not bothering to bring their own drinking water.

Esker-pades · 30 Jul 2019

Mountain Man said:
It depends. Personally I'd always choose to ask the TOC on Twitter than a Guard.

Which works except when passengers don't have Twitter or access to the internet. Or when the TOC Twitter team don't know.

Antman · 30 Jul 2019

bramling said:
Just like they would if stuck for hours on a motorway... the difference there being there’s no one to blame for people not bothering to bring their own drinking water.

There is only so much drinking water somebody could reasonably be expected to carry on a train journey.

gazzaa2 · 30 Jul 2019

bramling said:
Just like they would if stuck for hours on a motorway... the difference there being there’s no one to blame for people not bothering to bring their own drinking water.

Even for a 10 minute journey on the tube or commute into town?

bramling · 30 Jul 2019

gazzaa2 said:
Even for a 10 minute journey on the tube or commute into town?

No different to making a 10-minute journey which involves going from one exit to another on a motorway and then coming up against a blockage. Things going wrong is a fact of life, it does no harm at all to carry a bottle of water with them. Not expecting people to carry half the contents of a swimming pool, but a 2 litre bottle is not a major burden on hot days.

Mathew S · 30 Jul 2019

bramling said:
Just like they would if stuck for hours on a motorway... the difference there being there’s no one to blame for people not bothering to bring their own drinking water.

In incidents where people are genuinely "stranded for hours" on the motorway then, certainly in my experience, the Highways Agency are pretty active in handing out bottles of water to queuing vehicles.

Anyway, on the broader point, I'm afraid I agree with @Chris M. If the railway can't resolve an incident before passengers feel the need to leave the train of their own accord, then that resolution - by definition - isn't happening quickly enough.

Passengers arents stupid - even if some do stupid things. They know that self-evacuating is dangerous. However, everyone will eventually reach a point where they are prepared to accept that risk because they see it as preferable to the inconvenience, discomfort, or hazards of being trapped on a train for an extended time. I cannot, for example, envisage me being willing to wait more than 30-40 minutes on a hot, crowded train in conditions like last week's heatwave, and probably a lot less than that if I can't see something very visibly happening to resolve the situation.

Passengers self-detrain from LO train 15 July 2019

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