You are making the error of assuming that the only way passengers can come to harm is by pulling the egress, and on a full-and-standing train with no water or functioning toilets this is totally false.
I find it both interesting and alarming that (also in disability cases) the railway does not seem to consider people "self evacuating" in a different sense than pulling the egress to be worthy of considerable effort to avoid.
Safety must come before convenience at ALL times - not just the safety of those onboard, but safety of responders, safety of passengers on other trains that may become stranded by a protracted and disruptive evacuation.
I'm not convinced I by that, I'm sorry.Even a controlled evacuation of persons onto the track is much, much more dangerous - actual, life threatening kind of danger - than being without a toilet for a couple of hours.
I can only speak for myself, but I don't think I'm unrepresentative of a lot of passengers in this respect. I would have had far, far more tolerance for the railway saying, "sorry, broken down train, we need to make everything wait here for a bit while we shift it," than I have for the farcical situation that happened yesterday.It’s not practical, or particularly safe to do a controlled train to ballast evacuation at the location - you’d potentially strand thousands to “rescue” hundreds who don’t necessarily need rescuing.
I'm not convinced I by that, I'm sorry.
Simply because, as we've seen I don't know how many times now, a controlled evacuation may be a risk, but it's much less of a risk than an uncontrolled one. I know that, in this incident, I was actively considering how I would get myself off the train I was on, if it didn't move. Had it not been for the specific location we were stopped in (had we, for example, been stopped half a mile back towards Salford Crescent) I would have done. And I'm certain, giving the amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth, that I would not have been alone.
Aside from the issue of sanitary facilities, medical problems, etc. much, much more thought needs to go into how these situations can be resolved more rapidly.
In short, yes.
I don't feel myself 'above' anything. As I explained earlier in the thread, throughout the ~90 minutes the train I was on was stationary, there was not a single communication from the guard or anywhere else.You’re not convinced that a risky controlled evacuation is safer than not having access to a toilet?
Ive acknowledged an uncontrolled evacuation is the worst case scenario already, but it’s a risk that isn’t difficult to manage with good communication; and the generally selfless patience of the vast majority of passengers prevails - most accept that they’d be making the situation far, far worse if they were to leave the train without permission. It’s disappointing to read you feel yourself above such sensibilities.
The railway does need to improve - it always needs to improve. But a need for improvement does not and must not overrule safety. People always ask why it took so long to evacuate the train - the simple answer is it wasn’t safer to do it any quicker.
Then frankly I think the railway has an attitude problem with them considering operations more important than their customers. Mind you, this is by no means the only place I have seen this - it pervades the organisation, and it's one of the things that is caused by it being guaranteed funding.
Safety before Convenience. Neither scenario has any benefit to operations, or infers any attempt to put operations first.
Unless you’re suggesting the railway should take a cavalier attitude towards the safety of its staff by forcing an inadequate number of them out onto the track to conduct an evacuation into a hazardous environment in severe weather?
I don't feel myself 'above' anything.
My view is that the railway needs to spend money on more standby teams able to conduct evacuations and equipment to ease such evacuations, and on the provision of emergency toilet facilities ("bog in a bag") and bottled water on ALL trains for the event of such a stranding.
Things need to change.
Are we talking a separate incident here? Suggested upthread it was somewhere near Longsight.I don't feel myself 'above' anything. As I explained earlier in the thread, throughout the ~90 minutes the train I was on was stationary, there was not a single communication from the guard or anywhere else.
I don't doubt that, had I had an understanding of what was happening based on full and Frank information from the train company (in my case, Northern), I would have felt very differently. But, as is all go often the case, I wasn't told anything at all.
In fairness to our guard, it did transpire that he had tried to make announcements, but that the train PA was defunct. We discovered this when, as we eventually arrived at Deansgate, he was confronted in the platform by a group of understandably irate passengers wanting to know why it had just taken them roughly an hour and a half - standing, in many cases - to get there from Salford Crescent.
Perhaps we should consider how toilets on modern trains can be made useable in some form when the power goes off, even if they just revert to acting as buckets?
My view is that the railway needs to spend money on more standby teams able to conduct evacuations and equipment to ease such evacuations, and on the provision of emergency toilet facilities ("bog in a bag") and bottled water on ALL trains for the event of such a stranding.
Things need to change.
Would it not have been possible to send an 08 and ,if necessary,an adapter coupling (they do have these don't they?) from Longsight to move the train to Picc or some other convenient platform? Perhaps the admin. required to do this would take too long?
Interesting you mention Blea Moor - it did used to be the case that trains on the S&C carried an emergency kit including water precisely because rescue could take a long time.
Who would give it out? The guard or OBS of course; most trains have these.
Why would it be thousands of staff? Across the whole network it would be more like a few hundred, which sounds a lot but in reality isn't.
Would be a lot easier if there was a standard (mechanical and braking) coupler...I still think the railway should move this way for DMUs and EMUs with the same braking systems at least.
Go back 50 years and it'd just have been shoved into a terminal platform at Picc by whatever was stuck behind it.
It is if you consider they would have to be on standby for every minute that services could run, so that would need at least 2-3 shifts at least. Didn't know that about Blea Moor though, although having emergency kits spaced close enough that train crews could walk there and back in a reasonable timescale is again not going to be practical.
You stated that had you been in a different location, you would have egressed yourself from the train, contrary to notices on the train that instruct you to remain onboard and await instructions from staff unless your life is in immediate danger. So evidently you feel you’re above the rules in order to even contemplate ignoring that one.
There's a difference between feeling that I am 'above' something, and making a deliberate and conscious decision to break a rule because I feel that it is in my best interest, and potentially that of others, to do so. It's important to remember that nobody on that train knew what was happening - there could have been a crash, a fatality, god forbid even a terrorist attack, or worse. There comes a point where, in the absence of any information, taking matters into your own hands is the correct course of action.You stated that had you been in a different location, you would have egressed yourself from the train, contrary to notices on the train that instruct you to remain onboard and await instructions from staff unless your life is in immediate danger. So evidently you feel you’re above the rules in order to even contemplate ignoring that one.
You are contradicting yourself, instructions from staff. There was a unit with dead PA (as per post above) but a guard made no attempt to come around and tell people, that's not instructions, that's hiding from passengers. I'm old enough to remember trains without PA and guard would walk the train telling every seating bay what latest was (even if someone had to hike to nearest signal post phone to find out first).
No point providing notices if staff aren't going to do what it says.
Thus the Railway provided rules which it wasn't prepared to stick to.
There's a difference between feeling that I am 'above' something, and making a deliberate and conscious decision to break a rule because I feel that it is in my best interest, and potentially that of others, to do so. It's important to remember that nobody on that train knew what was happening - there could have been a crash, a fatality, god forbid even a terrorist attack, or worse. There comes a point where, in the absence of any information, taking matters into your own hands is the correct course of action.
Coming to the notices I refer to - they’re all worded slightly different but typically it just says to await instructions from staff. It doesn’t put a time limit on it. It doesn’t even say it has to be the on train staff. It just says wait. If your life is in immediate danger you will be acutely aware of that fact - up until that point you are always safer on the train - even in any of the scenarios listed above.