Passengers leave NR train at Lewisham

From following this on BBC News last night, the TOC were tweeting that the delay was caused by rapidly-descending ice freezing the conductor rails. Whether that was conveyed to the passengers, I don't know, but given the advice from all & sundry about not travelling unless it was really urgent, you wonder how many people needed to be on it in the first place, especially as it was going to be a very restricted service at the very best.

And because Mrs tbf has had a bad bug all week, I have had to trudge round to the corner store for three days in a row(she's the only driver) & now I'm full of catarrh! So whether I'm being a hypocrite in saying the above is open to conjecture, even if mine is half-a-mile on foot only!

It's also worth bearing in mind that nobody ever makes allowance for the fact that train crew don't have some magic way of ensuring they get to work at all let alone on time that is not available to passengers!

Evacuation is a last resort, even if its a few yards from a station it still means finding enough staff licenced to go trackside (most station staff aren't) to manage an evacuation, getting them to the site, stopping all trains in the area (preferably after they've reached a platform) and then discharging traction current. If it is at all possible to get trains running again then that is obviously preferable but even that requires getting technical staff to the site to deal with any problem. If people decide to "evacuate" themselves (aka trespass on the railway) staff have to check the area to ensure that there none of the passengers have got lost and are still wandering trackside before they can resume the service.

Southeastern wouldn't have authorised an evacuation, I'm 99% sure that has to be Network Rail as they have responsibility for the track, signals and power supply.

This is the problem. The railway's attitude is that evacuation is always the last resort because it's so complicated to organise. As soon as it becomes clear that the train is going to be there for a while, start preparing for an evacuation - even if it doesn't come to that. If it takes an hour to get enough track-licensed staff to site, start getting them there an hour before they are needed even if you have to turn them back 10 minutes later. At any time trains are running there should be enough qualified staff available and suitably located that a train in an urban area can be evacuated on about 30-45 minutes notice. Training station staff in track safety would help significantly with this I suspect. If there is a possibility that passengers will self-detrain before you can get them off safely, then start preparing for that and preparing to evacuate any stalled trains in the area before they do.
And no matter what happens, make sure the staff in the trains and on the stations in the area know what is happening, and keep them informed as things progress, so they can pass this information on to the passengers. This will make it less likely they will self-detrain in the first place.

Passengers will self-evacuate, there is nothing the railway can do to prevent it other than getting them off the train before they do. Passenger don't understand how risky the railway is. You might think sitting for 90 minutes 300 yards from a station is preferable to the risks of an evacuation, but passengers do not and they are the ones that matter in this situation.

Quite - if there is a difference between how long the passengers consider it reasonable to wait on a stalled train and how long the railway management do, something has to give.

The only time I was on a train where people took it upon themselves to abandon ship, we had been stuck in snow maybe 100 yards from a south London station on non-corridor slam door stock for nearly an hour. The train was a refurbished EPB with a "talking ceiling" but it was not used. Everyone seemed to be well aware of the existence of, and potential hazard of, the live rail.

Reports of the recent case say people had no access to the toilets. The unit shown in the photos was a 376, so had no toilets in the first place.

I am never slow to criticise SWR, but they have been very good at getting me to and from work through the snow the last few days. Not necessarily on time, but in this weather getting there at all is an achievement.

To be frank, either NWR or the TOCS should have sufficient staff available to safely evacuate a train when it is needed. And track-trained staff could be useful in situations other than detrainments too (removing objects from the track is an obvious one). If they don't then they don't have a leg to stand on when passengers detrain themselves.

The way you avoid closing section 12 stations is by not staffing them at the absolute minimum levels so that you can handle out of course events. If you have a member of staff doing something uninteruptable who also needs to be elsewhere then your staffing is broken - either the uninteruptable task or the going elsewhere needs to be done by somebody else, and if there isn't a somebody else available then you need to employ more staff. When they aren't needing to evacuate trains or the like they could be a visible presence helping passengers in the ticket hall, or doing non-urgent work around the station, etc.

If you can't get enough staff to site quickly enough to safely evacuate a train before passengers detrain themselves then you don't have enough staff and/or they are in the wrong place. But you need to understand that an evacuation from a smoking train yards from a zone 1 station needs to happen much quicker than an evacuation from a stalled but powered train halfway between Chesham and Chlafont & Latimer - at least if you keep the passengers informed about what is happening.

The railway doesn't get to complain when passengers react according to human nature when they failed to plan for them doing exactly that.

Plus level of crowding - if everyone on a train has a seat they will be more patient than if the train is so crowded that people can't even sit on the floor.

i think trains should have backup battery to allow move trains without power in stations quickly eg if train stalls outside of station then driver could pressed emergency move button to move train forward - once the train is in station safety - driver could press emergency release doors - this opens all doors on side of platform with battery power
also they should have emergency food pack stored in case of emergencies like train broken down between two stations for hours long

somewhere there was news about trapped passegners on trains for 14 hours - the crosscountry had desiel power which powers everything on train so they said people was fed and waterd and had heat while other train was southwestern one which had problems - no food or water

I don't think this incident highlights a need for significantly increased numbers of staff (although I certainly don't disagree they are needed more generally), but it does demonstrate the need for station staff to be trained (and allowed) on to the track so that they can assist an evacuation, etc, from trains within walking distance of their station. Any additional staff needn't be sat around in mess rooms, but could be providing customer service or undertaking non-urgent tasks around the station.

I'm actually not certain whether a single track safety qualification is the way to go. Does everybody who might need to go on to the track all need the same skills? Someone going to assist a stalled train is doing a different job in different circumstances to someone walking miles inspecting earthworks for example. I think a modular system may be more appropriate with a basic core module for everyone and then extra modules (OHLE, 3rd rail, etc) for those that need them.

I'm reminded of an idea I originally floated somewhere on this forum in response to a different incident (I can't remember which one, possibly Holland Park) about giving a some very basic training in railway safety to volunteer commuters (and others who spend a lot of time on trains anyway) so that if they are involved in an incident they can take leadership role among the passengers, keeping them calm by acting with confidence and and air of authority (i.e. act like they know what they are doing, while actually knowing what they are doing). This will reduce the likelihood of panic and disorder and make the jobs of the driver and others working to resolve the issue easier. In a situation like at Lewisham they would likely have delayed the self evacuation and, with a very basic PTS qualification, made it a little less dangerous if it did happen or being an extra competent person able to assist in a controlled evacuation - even if their role in that wasn't on the track it would free up a staff member to do that role.
The training would not need to be more than 1-2 days a year for railway safety and include a railway add-on to a general first aid qualification (which employers would benefit from too). Maybe it could attract a small discount on a season ticket.
Obviously you couldn't guarantee to have someone on every train, but if you do have someone on an incident train then you win and if you don't you've not lost anything compared to now.

None of this though changes the key responsibility of a railway operator to its passengers in an incident: communicate. Regular and honest updates, even if it's just to say there is no change but you haven't been forgotten, are essential to a well-managed situation, regardless of everything else.

A friend of mine in work was on one of these trains. Basically she said she was stuck for over three hours. No working toilets, no communication from anywhere, no heating and a rammed train with no room for anyone to even sit down on the floor.

Sounds a bit grim, tbh - I’m hoping she pickled herself in gin over the weekend...

Did they have power? I mean other than battery?

I understand from other sources that far from abandoning the incident train, in fact all available SE and NR staff were dealing with 4 other stranded trains.

Organising a train evacuation is NOT a simple exercise with all sorts of procedures and actions needing to happen (you carn't simply grab the nearest railway employee regardless of what the press might think and say 'get on with it') made all the more harder by the prevailing weather conditions.

Had more resources been available the yes, the incident may not have occurred- however people need to realise that the weather the UK experienced last week (and the rapid thaw over the weekend in some places) is NOT NORMAL. In fact the last decent amount of snow we had was back in the winters of 2010 and 2011 - thats 8 & 7 years ago, while if you want to go back further then we are looking at 1991s (27 years ago) or 1987 (31 years ago). In Scandinavia or Central / Eastern Europe heavy snowfall occurs EVERY YEAR - not once or twice in a decade, as such it makes financial sense to have extra resources plus equipment (that has to be maintained / serviced regularly if it is to work reliably when called upon) available.

As I understand it the sequence of events was:

• A train ("train A") departing Lewisham stalled (due to ice on the conductor rail) clear of the platforms but within the signal overlap. This meant that the following train ("train B") was stationary at the preceding signal a short distance short of the empty platform (I've seen figures between about 20 and 150 yards)
• At some point between about 30 and 50 minutes after train A stalled, power was turned off to the shortest section of conductor rail (easily) possible so it could be de-iced. Trains A and B are now both without power. The driver of Train B repeatedly requested to detrain their passengers (whether track-side a short distance from the station, or after pulling forwards at extreme caution so at least the driver's door was adjacent to the platform is not clear) but permission from control was neither granted nor rejected. This was passed on to passengers.
• Around 60 minutes after the trains stopped, while de-icing was just getting under way, passengers from train B started self-detraining (possibly followed shortly by some from train A, I'm not certain of this though).
• The staff doing the de-icing saw the self-detraining passengers and arranged for an emergency isolation of the power supply over a wider area, stranding more trains from which passengers later self-detrained. The power isolaiton area was then expanded and the cycle repeated one or two more times after that.

The key points that your (phil 's) message miss is that with slightly different actions - i.e. not stranding passengers on a standing room only commuter train without toilets yards from a station in an inner urban area for an hour - the entire, entirely predictable, situation could have been avoided and evacuating the four trains remote from the station would not have been necessary.
What is required is

• Staff, who were already on site, being trained and allowed on to the track to (a) de-ice conductor rails so this didn't take over 30 minutes to begin. (b) assist in a controlled evacuation of the train (if that became necessary) before the passengers self-detrained.
• Signallers being allowed to authorise a train past a red signal at extreme caution so that it could be brought in to an empty platform (and actually deciding to do this)
• Gold command (or whoever was actually nominally in charge) actually taking charge and making decisions in a timely fashion, and to understand that they are dealing with people as well as trains.
• Staff being allowed to show initiative

None of this is impossible. Some of this will require some extra resources but it will provide benefits in other situations as well.


All of this though does require a culture change in the industry to realise that passengers are people and so will behave like people, whether that is in accordance with what suits the railway or not. I will repeat what I said at the start of the thread: passengers will self evacuate if their train is stationary longer than they feel appropriate in the circumstances and the railway can shout, scream, and plead at them not to all they like without making a blind bit of difference. They can prosecute them for trespass* all they like without making a blind bit of difference. The only thing they can do is evacuate them before they evacuate themselves. How long varies with circumstances, but when the train is within sight of a station it is generally much less than the railway currently seems to appreciate. Especially as the perception of the relative risks of many things on a railway by those with knowledge of the railway is significantly different to that of an average passenger. On another forum I've seen several railway staff make comments like "well obviously it's safer to stay on a train for several hours, even when it's full and standing with no toilets and no information than to be on the track." but to the average passenger, that is actually not obvious at all. Human nature means that people will act according to their own perception of the risks of the choices available, even if that perception is incorrect. In situations like this it is the job of the railway to understand this and prevent situations where the erroneous perception of risks leads to people putting themselves and others in danger.

The more I read about this incident the clearer it becomes that the lessons from previous events, particularly on Thameslink near Kentish Town a few years ago, have not been learned.

*Although I've seen it disputed elsewhere that self-evacuating a train in these circumstances is trespass if you then take the shortest available route off the railway or to a station.

I somehow doubt batteries or other modes of propulsion will ever stop this happening again unless/until RAIB wake up to reality - the reality so well described by Chris.

In third rail territory the risk of trains being stalled for protracted periods in adverse rail conditions is NOT an unknown event. So the lack of a well rehearsed and RAPIDLY deployed response in this incident seems something which RAIB should be taking a very close look at.

Lurking beneath Chris's comments is the weird disconnect when it comes to trains which somehow needs to be resolved. In this day and age it still seems entirely reasonable for TOCs to make masses of money carting passengers around in totally overloaded trains without access to toilets. Yet if you proposed carrying livestock in those conditions they would be castigated by Animal rights groups.

Lets be clear, if that train had been provided with working toilets and ample seats for all the passengers being carried, then people would have been far less stressed and far more willing to sit and wait patiently until the rail industry got their act together. Indeed this entire thread and predictable "OMG reporting" would have never occurred.

What we are really seeing is that self evacuation is a totally PREDICTABLE consequence of the appalling service supplied to those passengers which the TOCs should be taken to task for.

If I want to travel by car, coach, or aircraft I will not be allowed to travel if there is not a seat available. Perhaps the real answer is for RAIB to demand a halt to crush loading trains which in effect allows TOCs to profit by selling far more tickets than their services can carry.

Is this incident perhaps the trigger for RAIB to finally demand a seat per passenger on all trains.

ATOC / Network Rail Guidance Note – Meeting the Needs of Passengers when Trains are Stranded

www.rssb.co.uk/rgs/oodocs/atocnr%20gn%20sp01%20iss%203.pdf