Passenger "Mutiny" Due To Missed Stop At Swindon

[BayPaul]

The best solution is for the railway to manage passengers better. It takes a heck of a lot to grind them down enough to start doing this. The railway simply does not have enough respect for passengers in a good many cases like this.

The railway is quite good at incident management from an operational perspective, but very, very poor indeed at the passenger side.

I don't disagree at all. Incidentally I would have been in the pulling passcomm camp, if nothing else, as I wouldn't trust GWR not to penalty fare me for travelling beyond Swindon without a ticket!

 

[Wolfie]

The best solution is for the railway to manage passengers better. It takes a heck of a lot to grind them down enough to start doing this. The railway simply does not have enough respect for passengers in a good many cases like this.

The railway is quite good at incident management from an operational perspective, but very, very poor indeed at the passenger side.

Absolutely. The railway needs to get its head around the fact that people will not accept bring treated appallingly for its convenience and will kick back.

 

[Horizon22]

Why not? In any other industry, if the actions of employees lead to numerous customer complaints and acres of bad publicity in the national press, they would very quickly be shown the door.

Not necessarily. A warning perhaps. But if the employees involved are trying to make the best out of a bad situation (a shortage of train crew), some of the consequences of that are hardly their own fault - even if there might be some difference in how bad those consequences get, based on the team making the decisions.

As above, Control made the decision with input from the traincrew. It's not the controller's fault that the train was overcrowded, nor was it the fault of the traincrew. The alternative would've been for the train to stand indefinitely, and probably end up being cancelled at Bath, because the traincrew evidently deemed it unsafe (for themselves and/or for the passengers) to work the train with the passenger loadings as they were.

What I would say though is that there could have been pushback further down the line once the decision was made, nothing how busy it already was. Unfortunately it may well have been the case that if there was a crew change at Bristol, you had a West Country Train Manager taking it as far as Bristol, but then likely Bristol or Paddington crew taking it into London. Different crew have different interpretations. Given the circumstances there were really no easy answers.

 

[Bikeman78]

Ultimately the train crew manage the train. If they refuse on the point of safety (overcrowding) then the train will be sitting at Bath and won't go anywhere until some sort of mutual agreement is sorted between Control and the crew. Seeing as the crew on the the train are critical to the movement, I know who will win...

That being said I've only once before seen that conflict being protracted - if crew were to "refuse" a call order, that's the end of the matter normally, but its incredibly rare (normally on some sort of safety reason, like here).

Also maybe there was a crew-change on route so one crew agrees it but the situation then changes? I don't think that happened here, but something to consider.

How does one define if a train is too crowded? Once you have people standing down the aisle, does it matter if there are 10 or 30 per coach? If you can get the doors shut and the brakes off, what's the problem? Pre Covid, tube trains were routinely packed to the point that people had to duck to avoid the doors. I've been on a few National Rail trains that have been so full that I basically couldn't move. That's preferable to waiting an hour or more to find that the next train is just as bad, which can be the case during disruption.

Regarding this specific case, I'd have thought that stopping at Swindon would be a bonus because people could have got off and boarded the 1911. This was a pair of 387s and started at Swindon so would likely have been almost empty.

 

[Horizon22]

How does one define if a train is too crowded? Once you have people standing down the aisle, does it matter if there are 10 or 30 per coach? If you can get the doors shut and the brakes off, what's the problem? Pre Covid, tube trains were routinely packed to the point that people had to duck to avoid the doors. I've been on a few National Rail trains that have been so full that I basically couldn't move. That's preferable to waiting an hour or more to find that the next train is just as bad, which can be the case during disruption.

Regarding this specific case, I'd have thought that stopping at Swindon would be a bonus because people could have got off and boarded the 1911. This was a pair of 387s and started at Swindon so would likely have been almost empty.

That's a subjective matter I guess - probably when nobody can physically get on the train and the pictures show that to be quite possible. As for the tube, yes that did happen, but you normally have another train along 5 minutes later so it's okay. Its a lose/lose situation really; absoutely cramped conditions or wait at Bath with no guarantee when the next train is.

I too would think that calling at Swindon would be advisable, but what we don't know is what the flows were at Bath. If by announcing the train was no longer calling at Swindon, enough people (although as we know it would have to be effectively everyone) got off the train so that it was able to be dispatched, then that might be OK. If Swindon remained on the calling pattern and it was impossible to dispatch the train because people were still congregating around doors, that might have been what forced the alteration. Don't know the answer to that.

 

[gg1]

Also I have a sneaking suspicion that if the PA was in proper working order in every carriage then while some pax may have not heard the announcements I think most would have (Yes some will have headphones so loud you can't hear)

As has already been mentioned, a bigger problem is the steady stream of inane drivel you hear over the PA causes many people to just zone out the announcements, not helped by fact the potentially very useful and helpful phrase "This is an important announcement" has been neutralised by generally being followed by something which clearly isn't.

 

[CAF397]

Lots of stock has the ability for the driver to kick a passcom brake application out. I would be surprised if IETs do not.

Only (as mentioned) to avoid stopping in an unsuitable location to deal with the emergency.

if the PassComm was still being operated when stationary then I certainly wouldn't have been moving until they have been reset.

 

[michael74]

As has already been mentioned, a bigger problem is the steady stream of inane drivel you hear over the PA causes many people to just zone out the announcements, not helped by fact the potentially very useful and helpful phrase "This is an important announcement" has been neutralised by generally being followed by something which clearly isn't.

Its a good point. There is a psychology behind the wording and timings of announcements and imparting information to pax and clearly the railways have lost sight of that, to the detriment of the pax on the service in question, clearly it needs looking at. But I was on a Penzance - Paddington service last week and refreshingly there were not that many announcements made, the 1st Train Managers announcements were clearly audible (I had headphones in but still heard them), the 2nd TM from Exeter was not so and the Catering announcements were terrible.

 

[RH Liner]

Nowadays the Telegraph is no more a source of truth than the Daily Expreß.

Ah, l see what you did there

 

[Horizon22]

Its a good point. There is a psychology behind the wording and timings of announcements and imparting information to pax and clearly the railways have lost sight of that, to the detriment of the pax on the service in question, clearly it needs looking at. But I was on a Penzance - Paddington service last week and refreshingly there were not that many announcements made, the 1st Train Managers announcements were clearly audible (I had headphones in but still heard them), the 2nd TM from Exeter was not so and the Catering announcements were terrible.

I think there's actually a difference between what this forum - generally people who often use rail - and the majority of the general public consider "inane drivel" which actually many passengers find to be helpful information. Manual announcements can be hit and miss, and that's dependent on training, tone, accent, brevity, clarity etc.

 

[jumble]

To clear up some of the uncertainties:-

The train had previously been advertised as calling additionally at Swindon (and Chippenham), but those additional stops were withdrawn during the journey. It seems that that message didn’t get through to many/any of the passengers for some reason.

The passcomms were all operated after the train had passed nonstop through Swindon.

Initially the passcomms were because the train hadn’t stopped when it was meant to, then because the train was stopped out of course with no info as to why, then because the train was going to continue nonstop to Reading once the alarms were reset.

The traincrew were fully aware of the calling pattern, and the changes to it, throughout.

Eventually the decision was taken to withdraw the train back to Swindon to allow these passengers alight. A Swansea service was also diverted from Swindon via Box to pick up the Chippenham passengers off the Penzance and convey them to their destination.

The train terminated at Reading due to traincrew hours concerns for the return working to the West Country.

Set was a 9 car 802.

***

A sorry tale that I completely sympathise with the passengers on. Unfortunately I can’t opine further without falling foul of the social media police.

My son and his young lady were on this train
He says that no one made any announcement that the train was not going to stop at Swindon which is obviously why the reason the message did not get through
( unless the PA was faulty and the crew were unaware of this although no one has confirmed that announcements were actually made)

 

[Trainmiles]

Any explanation why, if it was all agreed with control to nonstop Swindon, the train was routed round by the platform line?

The train was stopped outside Swindon, rather than continuing on the Up main. It was held as both London platforms were occupied which makes it really strange that we waited for a platform to clear and then not stop.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The train was stopped outside Swindon, rather than continuing on the Up main. It was held as both London platforms were occupied which makes it really strange that we waited for a platform to clear and then not stop.

I have known staff say "we're not announcing that stop X is being missed/that we are terminating early because it means we don't have to deal with angry passengers".

I do sort of get this, but it's an example of poor customer service which in this case badly backfired if it is what they did. It was the case before mobile phones that it didn't overly matter as nothing could be done about it until arrival anyway, but now early and accurate information is key.

 

[Djgr]

The best solution is for the railway to manage passengers better. It takes a heck of a lot to grind them down enough to start doing this. The railway simply does not have enough respect for passengers in a good many cases like this.

The railway is quite good at incident management from an operational perspective, but very, very poor indeed at the passenger side.

As someone not involved in the industry (although I have in the past both in an operational and passenger group capacity) I find that the rail industry frustrates me tremendously.

Compared to other industries that I have worked in, I think it really struggles with being customer focused. Another area that it is very poor at is attention to detail.

I am not convinced that there are inherently differences between the rail and other industries that justifies these and is more about the perpetuation of a culture that would not be tolerated elsewhere.

 

[BrianW]

As someone not involved in the industry (although I have in the past both in an operational and passenger group capacity) I find that the rail industry frustrates me tremendously.

Compared to other industries that I have worked in, I think it really struggles with being customer focused. Another area that it is very poor at is attention to detail.

I am not convinced that there are inherently differences between the rail and other industries that justifies these and is more about the perpetuation of a culture that would not be tolerated elsewhere.

This. A difficult message for many rail 'enthusiasts' that populate this Forum. Rail has no ongoing 'right' to continue to exist , and not necessarily as per the 'old normal', unfortunately. rail has more rivals than ever now, including WFH. What is rail for? Who pays? Offtrack?

 

[Bletchleyite]

This. A difficult message for many rail 'enthusiasts' that populate this Forum. Rail has no ongoing 'right' to continue to exist , and not necessarily as per the 'old normal', unfortunately. rail has more rivals than ever now, including WFH. What is rail for? Who pays? Offtrack?

To be fair, other than Trent and Transdev Blazefield (which have one person in common who clearly has a different view), the bus industry is orders of magnitude worse.

 

[ComUtoR]

Its a good point. There is a psychology behind the wording and timings of announcements and imparting information to pax and clearly the railways have lost sight of that, to the detriment of the pax on the service in question,

Kind of ironic regarding wording. Using the term 'pax' dehumanises the people behind it. When passengers are simply termed as 'pax' you can see how easy it is just to see them as just numbers.

 

[michael74]

Kind of ironic regarding wording. Using the term 'pax' dehumanises the people behind it. When passengers are simply termed as 'pax' you can see how easy it is just to see them as just numbers.

Pax is a universal abbreviation not confined to the rail industry, (see also Peace in Latin and a range of furniture in IKEA), I don't agree its dehumanising passengers. I don't think they would care as long as they can get off the train.

 

[yorksrob]

I think passengers can take delays if they're relatively comfortable, or they can take crowded conditions of things are moving.

It's where you get the two combined that mutiny becomes more likely.

 

[Bikeman78]

I think there's actually a difference between what this forum - generally people who often use rail - and the majority of the general public consider "inane drivel" which actually many passengers find to be helpful information. Manual announcements can be hit and miss, and that's dependent on training, tone, accent, brevity, clarity etc.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. Sometimes I've been stuck at a station with nothing moving but the automatic safety drivel keeps getting churned out, e.g. take care because it's raining, don't forget to apply the brakes on your buggy, don't ride bicycles or skateboards, see it, say it, sorted etc. No one wants to hear any of this, they just want to know when the train is likely to turn up.

To be fair, the on board announcements on the IETs don't have much of the above. Some TOCs are way over the top. I recall being on a SWT 455 where there were five or six automated announcements on the trot. It gets very wearing and it's no surprise that some people put on headphones to try and drown it out.

 

[Western Sunset]

I'm looking forward to the film version of this; "Mutiny on the Trains" starring Reg Varney, Bob Grant, Anna Karen and Stephen Lewis.

 

[Bluejays]

Not a good incident at all. But I wonder if some are getting carried away over parts of the response on here . There were quite obviously mistakes made by gwr, but quite how that translates to someone asking for dismissals is beyond me. Hard to tell at the moment who made the mistake, and even then, dismissal would surely only be justified if the decision was made with bad intent or compromised safety. Making an innocent mistake is rarely grounds for dismissal in any industry.

Struggle with the idea that 'all the passengers pulling passcoms were justified' , especially as from several witness testimonies, it would appear that many of their fellow passengers were angry at them for doing so.

Also the idea that this incident shows the rail industry is fundamentally anti passenger is wrong in my opinion. I know for a fact that a quite late hold was put on a later west country to London train at temple meads . This was due to a couple of passengers on a Taunton to Bristol service needing connections to London, who would have otherwise had to change at parkway. and one rather confused bloke looking for Melksham who had started his journey about an hour to late entirely down to his own mistake. That train was additionally stopped and held to allow these connections. End result was the London passengers actually got to Paddington earlier than they would have if there btm to pad service hadn't been cancelled, and a Melksham passenger getting home in the evening instead of 5.30 the next morning.

These decisions don't get seen though do they. As bad as this 1 incident is, don't tar the entire industry or all of gwr from it, thats downright wrong

 

[bramling]

The best solution is for the railway to manage passengers better. It takes a heck of a lot to grind them down enough to start doing this. The railway simply does not have enough respect for passengers in a good many cases like this.

The railway is quite good at incident management from an operational perspective, but very, very poor indeed at the passenger side.

Sometimes the industry can’t win though. Whilst on this occasion clearly the whole situation left a lot to be desired, it’s often not much different when there’s planned engineering work and the information and provision of alternatives are good. Many people will still claim to be completely unaware of things, and play the arse to the point of being needlessly abusive to staff. The weekend lot are the absolute worst for this.

One only has to see what happens when there’s weekend engineering works on the Underground. Whatever one thinks of TFL, there will always be massive amounts of information about such works, including copious announcements. Yet a good proportion of people don’t play ball.

This is precisely why the train crew should NEVER be allowed to call these decisions - that should be control’s job. Down on the platform or in their cubby hole or cab the train crew simply don’t have the complete picture and cannot hope to know what passengers have been told before they boarded (and thus don’t know what the passengers expect). I can completely understand why already delayed passengers who finally believed they were on their way would be very upset if they were told to get off part way through their journey and might then take action - and it the train was already rammed it’s difficult for the average punter to understand why turfing them off early makes things better. So if this account is accurate, the train crew were primarily responsible for creating the problem and need to be held accountable. One fewer train crew in its employ would be the best approach if GWR wants to salvage something from this mess.

One can just as easily say that control aren’t always best placed when it comes to decisions, due to being remote from what’s happening on the ground - and arguably in some cases depending on background not having the on-the-ground experience to be able to predict what a decision will lead to in practice.

The answer is of course somewhere in the middle - the staff on the ground will know what’s going on, but the controllers will have the “bigger picture”. The optimum is for both sides of the fence to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and know when to assert a decision and when to back off. Naturally this needs the right combination of personalities!

The industry does seem to have its fair share of “I know best, do as you’re told” people unfortunately, which left unchallenged as a culture can lead to problems.

In this case there was probably an element of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There will undoubtedly have been some pressure from people at stuck Bristol, which I expect will be manifested itself in staff there making request to control for something to be done. The extra stops wouldn’t have been an issue but clearly the passenger volumes were too great, which with some foresight perhaps might have been predictable.

Unfortunately as others have said changing plans is something to be avoided where possible, generally on the railway it’s best to make a decision and stick to it if at all possible, simply due to the amount of comms involved.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The answer is of course somewhere in the middle - the staff on the ground will know what’s going on, but the controllers will have the “bigger picture”.

And the answer to that is to look at ITIL type principles - if absolutely every possibly relevant piece of information about the incident is logged, then everyone has access to everything about it. Knowledge is power.

You can then feed multiple incidents into a root cause analysis problem to try to avoid things happening again.

 

[Winthorpe]

I'm looking forward to the film version of this; "Mutiny on the Trains" starring Reg Varney, Bob Grant, Anna Karen and Stephen Lewis.

 

[Horizon22]

And the answer to that is to look at ITIL type principles - if absolutely every possibly relevant piece of information about the incident is logged, then everyone has access to everything about it. Knowledge is power.

You can then feed multiple incidents into a root cause analysis problem to try to avoid things happening again.

All relevant information is accurately logged - but not everyone will need to / be willing to access all that information at the same time. You can log a service is "extremely busy" but what does that actually mean? Crew aren't going to be on log items all the time when a phonecall is quicker. Asking people to check everything that isn't essential might lead to more delay.

 

[Bletchleyite]

All relevant information is accurately logged - but not everyone will need to / be willing to access all that information at the same time. You can log a service is "extremely busy" but what does that actually mean? Crew aren't going to be on log items all the time when a phonecall is quicker. Asking people to check everything that isn't essential might lead to more delay.

And that is a cultural problem which applying ITIL principles to your business helps to resolve.

It is worth taking the time to log stuff because it means all stakeholders in any decision are fully informed to make it.

That data can be augmented with things like "how many people on that train have a reservation to Swindon and have used their e-ticket at a gateline so are likely to be on the train".

Knowledge is power, as I said.

 

[Horizon22]

And that is a cultural problem which applying ITIL principles to your business helps to resolve.

It is worth taking the time to log stuff because it means all stakeholders in any decision are fully informed to make it.

That data can be augmented with things like "how many people on that train have a reservation to Swindon and have used their e-ticket at a gateline so are likely to be on the train".

Knowledge is power, as I said.

It is for certain people at certain times; I simply in a realistic sense do not see a guard or Train Manager logging into it in the middle of a disruptive scenario. I personally think getting as much information as possible is vital in a railway control job or in operational roles and a lot of it is already there - its that people chose not to utilise it, it takes time to access it, or they don't believe it to be relevant. For instance the "what is happening" is things like CIS, PIS and announcements and the "why is it happening" will be partly in CIS/PIS (delay reason) but mainly logs, or fleet requirements, stock/crew diagrams etc.

I'm not entirely sure this scenario is relevant though because it seems to be the control team and crew knew what was going to happen after Bath, only that not all of the on-board passengers knew - compounded by the severe overcrowding and possible PA fault. Interestingly enough, this can happen all the time in disruption where it isn't the railway's fault - people board services all the time that are advertised as running fast and with announcements given in good time but they're somehow not aware or not paying attention. 99% of people will be fine, but all the information systems in the world and people will still make mistakes, and I'm not sure the railway (or any other industry) can ever prevent that fully. In this situation, there may have been some people wanting Swindon trying to get off but simply couldn't.

 

[BayPaul]

And that is a cultural problem which applying ITIL principles to your business helps to resolve.

It is worth taking the time to log stuff because it means all stakeholders in any decision are fully informed to make it.

That data can be augmented with things like "how many people on that train have a reservation to Swindon and have used their e-ticket at a gateline so are likely to be on the train".

Knowledge is power, as I said.

I agree with your premise, but I don't think it is relevant here, for the reasons Horizon22 gives. In this case, where the industry let the passengers down was the terrible systems for ensuring the right data gets to the passengers. How difficult can it be for the onboard PIS system (both automated PA and the digital display), the equivalent systems in stations, and the information given to staff are all instantly updated accurately in real time, and properly flag major changes like this (flashing display, urgent tone before automated announcement etc). I know that this isn't possible with the current setup, but it should be, and making it work properly should be a priority.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I agree with your premise, but I don't think it is relevant here, for the reasons Horizon22 gives. In this case, where the industry let the passengers down was the terrible systems for ensuring the right data gets to the passengers. How difficult can it be for the onboard PIS system (both automated PA and the digital display), the equivalent systems in stations, and the information given to staff are all instantly updated accurately in real time, and properly flag major changes like this (flashing display, urgent tone before automated announcement etc). I know that this isn't possible with the current setup, but it should be, and making it work properly should be a priority.

I would say that not stopping at Swindon was a poor decision, so it is not just that. How do we provide decision makers with information to make those decisions better?