Detrainment onto electrically-live track at Peckham Rye

Presumably they can't be used where the 3rd rail is fitted with guards/shrouds.

The short circuiting devices do not work as quickly as you would expect. They can take upto 5 minutes. Thats why its always best to contact the controller.

The 5 minutes is partly due to this, www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Barnes1955.pdf and another that I can't remember. If the circuit breakers tripped immediately, they would trip for foxes and other animals and in certain weather conditions, so a delay is added in, and if the short persists it then cuts out.

I have re-read the report and (perhaps controversially) it is my opinion (as a passenger) that if the driver tells me to walk down from his cab, I would assume that the driver was satisfied that it was safe for me to do so, regardless of him/her having authority to do so or not. To be 300mm from a live power rail, without any fail-safe (e.g. short circuiting device) and without any Network Rail staff etc. standing track side would make me nervous...

The driver is responsible for the passengers while they are on the train, and technically, climbing down the steps from the cab, I would still be on the train, 300mm from a live rail.

Easy to say this in retrospect, but there has to be one person responsible for passenger safety 'on the ground', be it a manager, station supervisor or driver. The only one of these people present when the detrainment started, was the driver. To take on this responsibility maybe drivers need to be paid more/trained more, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and it isn't clear to me that the driver believed that traction current was off or on.

As the report states it was the Incident Response Controller (IRC) at the Arriva Rail London strategic command in Swiss Cottage who gave the authorisation to detrain and they have legal responsibility to ensure that traction current had been discharged.  Ideally the driver would check with the IRC that traction current had been discharged but it isn't their legal responsibility to do so.

From the report the problems are obvious, firstly the driver had to communicate with the ARL strategic command at Swiss Cottage and the signaller at Network Rail Route Operations Centre, Three Bridges but it seems that Swiss Cottage and Three Bridges weren't communicating with each other.  In addition in order to contact the Govia staff at Peckham Rye station the ROC had to go through the NR Sussex Route Control Centre, also at Three Bridges but on a different floor of the building.

Obviously things would be a lot easier if the driver only had to communicate with a single control room that covered an area but with our fragmented railway system where you have various TOCs operating over track managed by Network Rail that isn't an option.

Secondly as the driver is the only member of staff in the immediate vicinity who can go trackside they alone have to supervise detrainment without any assistance from station staff and I would suggest that is too much for one person to deal with.

As its unlikely we'll get guards back the solution would be for the TOCs to train station staff to go trackside but its unlikely they'd be able to hire fully trained staff from an agency.

I can see why they might want to do this. What I can't understand is how?

We are talking of megawatts of available power, and leaving a system with that much power delivery in a short circuited state for more than a very short space of time would normally mean something would get very hot and either catch fire* of go open circuit.
(Without circuit breakers, that would, of course, be the fuse.)

Also, how does this work from a health and safety standpoint. I someone has a device that they can use to protect people in imminent danger, it seems odd that it could be systemically ignored.



* Given the heavy duty nature of the cabling involved, a transformer would seen the most likely contender.

Great, thanks.

That's 100% clear, now.

Speaking as a passenger I don't think that there is anything controversial in that - if a member of railway staff (in any role) asks me to do something I should be able to assume that (a) they have the authority to ask me to do that, and (b) it is safe for me to do that. Indeed section 2.3 of the "Ticketing and Travel Guide -London Overground and TfL Rail Services" states:

I believe this is taken from the general railway bylaws.

Is this what the Three Bridges site was made to solve, or the London Bridge shared office?

Are you referring to clause 12(2) of the Byelaws?



I would humbly suggest that "I know this is an electrified railway and you have not been able to give me any assurance that the electricity supply has been turned off" counts as sufficient good cause to disobey. Of course, in this situation, police jurisdiction would fall to BTP who would have to come to the train - I doubt they'll be venturing onto the tracks without assurance that it's isolated! In short, this is one of those situations where it could be best to say "Police? Bring it on!"

With my admin hat on, I would point out that in the vast majority of situations railway staff have done the right thing and their instructions are probably in your best interests. JFDI.