Exactly my point…
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Almost got trapped inside Leamington Spa station for the night
- Thread starter Vectorspace
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That's a great idea and not one I'd thought of.
As it can be “intentionally or recklessly” then presumably yes - “by accident” would be a lot more doubtful.
But in this case I doubt it was intentional.
If it's recklessness I still doubt it's false imprisonment. It maybe something else, but I doubt it would be that.
Of course if you are versed in the laws, may be you can quote something that backs up your comments.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
And there lies the solution to the problem if it happens again at Leamington: Write your address somewhere on your clothing. Post yourself into the post box. And wait for the postal service to deliver you to your home the next morning.
For the criminal offence: no. For the civil wrong: yes.
Intention and recklessness do not include negligence.
Recklessness would be sufficient to make out both the offence and civil wrong of false imprisonment.
An example would be a school janitor locking up the building without checking whether anyone is still inside where there is reason to believe that there might be.
Adam Williams
Established Member
A flawless plan
Looks like the closest is Slough (GWR)
Haywain
Veteran Member
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- 20,518
That shows a remarkable level of faith in the Royal Mail!
Cherry_Picker
Established Member
Do West Mids have train crew based at Leamington overnight?
Well time to see if we can get this thread extended beyond page 4.
The follow on to the original query (and to anyone else who thinks they may be in the same predicament ) is to move to Stoke Mandeville in Bucks or the near locality ( plenty of houses being built here). This is also a Chiltern run station. Irrespective of how late you are or are subject to the vagaries of the train planners you will have no difficulty in getting off the station premises from either the up or down lines. The down line has a circuitous path up to the main road with no gates at either end or you could use the footbridge, again free access at any time, over to the up line where you will find the station buildings which will be locked but never fear there is an open path onto the forecourt with no gate immediately when you come off the footbridge or you can pass down the platform and use the ungated gap which has been provided for users of the bike racks. There are help points on each platform but I suggest my alternatives may be quicker. If you still feel you need to send a letter then the local post office, with box, is 500 yards away.
No doubt other forum members can provide a whole list of their local stations with similar free access but on balance perhaps the Mods should lock (pun intended) this thread.
The follow on to the original query (and to anyone else who thinks they may be in the same predicament ) is to move to Stoke Mandeville in Bucks or the near locality ( plenty of houses being built here). This is also a Chiltern run station. Irrespective of how late you are or are subject to the vagaries of the train planners you will have no difficulty in getting off the station premises from either the up or down lines. The down line has a circuitous path up to the main road with no gates at either end or you could use the footbridge, again free access at any time, over to the up line where you will find the station buildings which will be locked but never fear there is an open path onto the forecourt with no gate immediately when you come off the footbridge or you can pass down the platform and use the ungated gap which has been provided for users of the bike racks. There are help points on each platform but I suggest my alternatives may be quicker. If you still feel you need to send a letter then the local post office, with box, is 500 yards away.
No doubt other forum members can provide a whole list of their local stations with similar free access but on balance perhaps the Mods should lock (pun intended) this thread.
Ony flaw I can see is always having enough stamps for 80+ kg of me on my person at 0100... i hate to think of being retained in the sorting centre for payment of excess postage. Would my wife pay up?
Adam Williams
Established Member
Unfortunately it would appear that there is a trade off between the average house prices and the likelihood of being locked into the local Chiltern station!
You can buy postage online these days. Sadly, the maximum weight for items posted in a postbox is 20kg.
Yes, and they stable some units at the station. However they would long have signed off duty by the time the late-running Chiltern services arrived.
Lots of codes will work on a mobile as there's a list stored on the device (or maybe the SIM) that tells the phone to trigger an emergency call. So you can use the number you know and it just works. It also has a higher priority on the network so if there's congestion on the cell, you'll be placed above someone else on an ordinary call. [There are in fact many priority levels, and in times of a major incident, some users can be rejected to make things available only to key users].
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It might also take a while if you didn't have a first class ticket.
But if in this case if the staff member incorectly had no reason believe there might be someone at the station.....
WMT have fitters and cleaners at Leamington for at least part of the night.
Vectorspace
Member
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Chiltern have replied to my report, saying that the station management team apologise and are investigating.
They also say they won't be able to inform me of the outcome of the investigation due to employee confidentiality, which I do understand.
They also say they won't be able to inform me of the outcome of the investigation due to employee confidentiality, which I do understand.
Yes, in those circumstances a civil wrong of false imprisonment could be committed even if the member of staff is acting completely innocently.
Surely it is much simpler than that? A scan of any trains which are running more than 30 or 60 minutes late would quickly narrow down which services to review and check that the stations they serve will still be open, or arrange for this to take place, or contact the train and advise of it not stopping at that station together with the alternative arrangements for passengers.
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After around 9pm, desks in most TOC controls start being uncovered and by 0124 I'd expect the office to be on a skelton staff (which would be small number of controllers given that Chiltern is a small TOC and wouldn't have many even during the day). This skeleton staff would be sorting out the ramifications of the earlier major disruption, as well as allocating the units for the start of traffic (a more difficult task if units are displaced).
They'd then have to be aware of any stations on their patch which are in the overlap of a Venn diagram of 'stations fully locked after the last train' and 'stations not manned 24/7'. In my area, I cannot think of a single station like that. And trains running set down only late at night is unusual. So much so that I'd posit that many controllers would not encounter a train which is both unadvertised and setting down at stations which at the time are both fully locked and unstaffed. Therefore, they're not going to be aware of the need to contact station staff to keep them on. I'd expect that if Chiltern follow this up properly, they'll create a contingency plan for said stations and brief controllers accordingly.
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Surely that doesn't stop Chiltern advising of the outcome in terms of the arrangements to prevent such issues arising in the future?
Adam Williams
Established Member
Yeah, it feels like a bit of a cop-out answer really. Nobody is expecting to get detailed information about e.g. disciplinary processes or about individual employees from a customer service rep, that'd be grossly inappropriate. But what is important is exactly what you refer to: how a re-occurence is going to be prevented, ideally with a process that isn't reliant on one single member of staff.
Maybe it could never work in practice but you could imagine a technological solution here which looks at the TD feed for passenger trains stopping at stations that you know are locked up (would require the automatic doors are 'smart' and can report their status) and creates an alert which can be double checked with CCTV remotely.
I take the last / one of the last trains from Marylebone to Leam pretty often.. I'm not sure I find the whole debacle and now this response very reassuring. Luckily I've yet to have to deal with disruption on the scale that OP experienced (not Chiltern's fault in this case, obviously) and things have generally run reasonably smoothly.
It has been explained above, by someone with industry experience, why it isn’t as simple as it might first appear.
No organisation is going to give details of internal investigations or processes. Especially in situations where nobody was actually inconvenienced, and the complaint is about a hypothetical situation.
On the contrary, you could classify this as a “near miss” - a situation which could have been worse had the circumstances been only slightly different (I.e. no contractors on site).
Unless the RAIB get involved there’s zero chance of that happening. It’s an internal matter and, even if internal processes are updated, that isn’t something you’d expect to be made public. An apology and statement that things will be investigated is all you can realistically expect.
Lots of unknowns. We don‘t even know for sure who let the OP out, or that the station was unstaffed at the time.
Adam Williams
Established Member
I know this seems to be the attitude of some train operating companies, but back in the real world it's .. actually pretty normal to be reasonably transparent about processes and policies, particularly those with a health and safety purpose that there will be public interest in. There will obviously be exceptions if there are commercial sensitivities or national security concerns, but at a previous employer their SOPs for lone workers, for conducting risk assessments, working at heights / in confined spaces / doing other risky things were all made public and free to access online. That made sense because the site was accessible to the public.
TfL have released standard operating procedures in the past as well as their staff-facing materials for ensuring passenger safety in different scenarios and the world didn't implode. It's really not that deep.
Am apology without any context on how they're going to try and put things right is just an empty platitude.
Where was that, out of interest?
I’ve also worked outside the railway and certainly wasn’t aware of former employers routinely publishing such information - there is generally little public interest in it, in any case. The TfL stuff online as far as I can tell is pretty generic and not location specific.
There is also clearly a legitimate security concern around this type of information in the context of public transport. The response is indeed a platitude, but it just isn’t realistic for members of the public to complain about hypothetical situations and then expect chapter and verse on internal investigations.
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Assuming that all the passengers could fit on the 2307, it seems odd that you weren't all transferred on to that train with your train being terminated at Banbury and eventually running forward empty.
I would still expect them to say what procedures or measures they've taken to prevent a repeat occurrence.
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What concern could there possibly be about a TOC publishing the procedure they use to avoid passengers from becoming stranded?
I'm afraid this seems to be just another case where you are trying to excuse the inexcusable because in your view, the railway can do no wrong...
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renegademaster
Established Member
Especially since they are basically a government agency now and transparency and freedom of information are the big buzzwords