chaos at wokingham: can customer information be improved during disruption?

[acs3141]

I'm sat on a train on the wrong platform at wokingham bound for Waterloo.

no trains running between wokingham and reading due to a person being hit and problems in the Clapham junction / Twickenham area.

my main point is the ensuing chaos. matrix signs become useless. the automated announcements are useless. the station staff have no real information and the announcements they do make are barely audible.

there must be a better way to handle these situations. we've been running the railways for decades.

I'm just venting my frustration.

thanks

 

[theironroad]

Glad to see your frustration is only about you, no mention of the person involved in the incident or the train driver, emergency services personnel and many others trying to get the matter sorted.

 

[CdBrux]

Glad to see your frustration is only about you, no mention of the person involved in the incident or the train driver, emergency services personnel and many others trying to get the matter sorted.

Not glad to see you couldn't care about the customer. I think most people understand and accept the occasional issue for suc unfortunate reasons and realise there are many people doing their best in a difficult situation but just wish for some better info, even if it is just to say it will be a while until we can have an idea on what is happening

 

[30909]

Given that the OP posted their comments just under an hour ago and SWR Journey Check informs there are replacement buses organised to run Reading Wokingham 20 minutes ago. Its is reasonable to assume that the staff on board and at Wokingham relayed all the information that they had at the time. Sometimes you just have to sit back and let those close to the fan and smelly stuff play their version of three dimensional chess until they can offer something that may help alleviate the situation.

 

[theironroad]

Not glad to see you couldn't care about the customer. I think most people understand and accept the occasional issue for suc unfortunate reasons and realise there are many people doing their best in a difficult situation but just wish for some better info, even if it is just to say it will be a while until we can have an idea on what is happening

Where did I say i didn't care about the customer. I've been a passenger on trains involved in these and other lengthy incidents.
However, the op's post didn't even make the slightest mention about anyone else, just their delay.

If they can take time and have connectivity to write a rant on this website, they probably have access to plenty of sources of information about what's going on.

 

[43096]

Where did I say i didn't care about the customer.

And by the same logic, where did the OP say they didn’t care about those directly involved in the incident?

 

[acs3141]

I may have worded my original post badly

I'm not blaming front line staff, it's the system.

I could find out that there were no trains running between wokingham and reading. the matrix signs were saying everything was delayed but no other information. i don't think the station staff have enough concrete info to pass on, but when they do the pa system makes it Impossible to hear.

I was passing on information to other passengers. I was talking to staff at ascott and they get frustrated.

it's that there doesn't appear to be a system in place to cope with situations like this. so you just see a sea of people looking totally lost and not knowing what to do due to the conflicting information.

the majority of staff are great.

I was just venting my frustration that we have a rail system that could be better. i wish i had not posted this now

 

[Fearless]

I may have worded my original post badly

...

I was just venting my frustration that we have a rail system that could be better. i wish i had not posted this now

acs3141, please don't feel bad. You have a valid point in drawing attention to the difficulties that such situations create for all of us, whether staff or the travelling public. When there's chaos, lack of information, unclear information (including inaudible announcements), it can be deeply unsettling for everybody involved. I've been in similar situations myself and have used my own 'inside' railway knowledge to comfort members of the public who might be getting panicky. I'm on your side here!

Braced for impending criticism...

 

[Twotwo]

acs3141, please don't feel bad. You have a valid point in drawing attention to the difficulties that such situations create for all of us, whether staff or the travelling public. When there's chaos, lack of information, unclear information (including inaudible announcements), it can be deeply unsettling for everybody involved. I've been in similar situations myself and have used my own 'inside' railway knowledge to comfort members of the public who might be getting panicky. I'm on your side here!

Braced for impending criticism...

So am i. And I agree with everything that’s written here.

 

[HowardGWR]

Let's be positive here. A good p.a. system would have a holding message for the screens saying 'all trains are halted - please await further info', which would be contolled by a switch in the ROC (or equivalent). Then the audio system would be directly addressable from the same location and the controller would put out info as it became available. Perhaps others could make a suggestion as what else could be done. It needs the ability for a staff member, not involved in dealing with the calamity, but who has access to the information, to be able to concentrate on that function. This person would also be able to contact train personnel in the area, or even take over the train pis as another improvement. It's really a question of technology and cost.

 

[theironroad]

Let's be positive here. A good p.a. system would have a holding message for the screens saying 'all trains are halted - please await further info', which would be contolled by a switch in the ROC (or equivalent). Then the audio system would be directly addressable from the same location and the controller would put out info as it became available. Perhaps others could make a suggestion as what else could be done. It needs the ability for a staff member, not involved in dealing with the calamity, but who has access to the information, to be able to concentrate on that function. This person would also be able to contact train personnel in the area, or even take over the train pis as another improvement. It's really a question of technology and cost.

Signallers can access the train pa system via the cab radio system. However, it is only supposed to be used in an emergency when they cannot get a response from the driver. If the driver has keeled over and the signaller cannot get a response, they can PA for any railway staff to go forward to investigate.

 

[Highlandspring]

NR and TOC controllers can also access the train’s on board PA directly through their GSM-R fixed terminals and I have known it done before in extremis. There was talk earlier this year of a pilot scheme in the Glasgow North Electrics corridor to provide customer information directly from a dedicated controller to passengers using the train PA during disruption (to relieve drivers of the burden) but it never came to anything. I think the Nexala system used by some TOC Controls can also access and update the on board PIS screens on compatible units.

 

[silverfoxcc]

Can someone ITK explain how a PUT affects train service 30 odd miles away?
What was happening to the Wokingham to London services?
I am pretty sure they could have at least run to Staines to 'turn around' possible further inbounds, but to have this chaos at the far end of the line i cannot understand at all.
Thanks

 

[30907]

Can someone ITK explain how a PUT affects train service 30 odd miles away?
What was happening to the Wokingham to London services?
I am pretty sure they could have at least run to Staines to 'turn around' possible further inbounds, but to have this chaos at the far end of the line i cannot understand at all.
Thanks

The PUT was between Wokingham and Reading, as the OP states. Trains were reversed at Wokingham, and according to RTT the first left Wokingham about 1812, just over 45 minutes after the last service to run through from Reading.
The OP's comment was about the lack of information.

 

[silverfoxcc]

Sorry
His second line was a bit ambiguous i read it as it the PUT being near Clapham and as result causing problems there


If it had read

no trains running between wokingham and reading due to a person being hit( at /near, together/combined with) problems in the Clapham junction / Twickenham area.

All the info reqd is there

Apologies for being a bit of a pedant

 

[Belperpete]

I think sometimes people underestimate how long it takes to a) deal with an incident and then b) disseminate the necessary information to everybody involved.

it takes time to get staff, police, etc out on site, and until they are on site you don't have much clue how long it is going to take to resolve. And even when they are on site, you may only have a rough estimate of how long it will take to resolve. As well as the train directly involved, there may be other trains trapped by the incident that need dealing with, and services rearranged to avoid trapping even more. Information needs to be got out to all those concerned, and the information will be different depending on which train you are on, or which station you are at. Just getting all the right information to all the right people is a major logistical challenge in itself, particularly in a situation that evolves over time, so the information has to keep being revised. I do think that control rooms need more staff to disseminate information at times of disruption, leaving the controller to deal with the incident.

I also think that in this day and age, when people expect instant information and instant action, that the railway needs to better manage peoples' expectations. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, it will take time for the AA or RAC to get to you and to get the car running again. Expecting a broken-down train to be fixed any faster is plain unrealistic. Likewise if there is an RTA, a motorway may be shut for several hours, expecting a railway line to be reopened after a PUT in any less a time is again unrealistic.

 

[HowardGWR]

Thanks for the info that the controllers can talk directly to pax on trains if need be. What about direct to p.a on stations? In this case, I assume Wokingham was manned, so I imagine local staff could have made announcements on the tannoy, had they known what to announce.

 

[silverfoxcc]

Belperpete

I can understand your thoughts, and it is a by product of todays society
In the past the first concern was to get the system running

Harrow Trains First trains running past on slow lines within 24hrs
LT tracks opened within 72 hours all lines back within 96hrs


Bill Hoole who was driving 60508 when it overturned and killed his fireman reported for work the next day ( he was heavily criticised by the rest of Top Shed staff for doing this) Nowadays how many weeks off would the driver get?
About 30 yrs ago i was on the midland main line when we were stopped for about 30mins. Finally moved to see the aftermath of a PUT on the up

Now i am not saying that was neither correct nor incorrect procedure, but that how it was, over the recent years there seems to be this culture of every tom dick and harry involved all standing in a circle point fingers and saying 'not my fault'
and not only on the railways The road organisations also take the attitude that every severe crash is an 'crime scene' and roads are shut for hours.There doesnt seem to be anyone to take charge of clearing the traffic held up, as seen in several recent crashes.

We have advanced in many areas of technology so thing could be brought back to normal asap, but it seems no one does anything to implement it.

 

[SilentGrade]

Now i am not saying that was neither correct nor incorrect procedure, but that how it was, over the recent years there seems to be this culture of every tom dick and harry involved all standing in a circle point fingers and saying 'not my fault'

I wasn't aware you were involved in the intricacies of getting the railway back running again after a major incident

 

[Belperpete]

Thanks for the info that the controllers can talk directly to pax on trains if need be. What about direct to p.a on stations? In this case, I assume Wokingham was manned, so I imagine local staff could have made announcements on the tannoy, had they known what to announce.

None of the station PA systems that I am aware of do, not to say that there aren't some that do. But generally, the control rooms don't have the level of staffing to be making announcements to individual trains and stations. The best that you would be likely to get would be a generic all-points announcement that services are disrupted because of an incident at xxx.

 

[Belperpete]

Belperpete

I can understand your thoughts, and it is a by product of todays society
In the past the first concern was to get the system running

Harrow Trains First trains running past on slow lines within 24hrs
LT tracks opened within 72 hours all lines back within 96hrs


Bill Hoole who was driving 60508 when it overturned and killed his fireman reported for work the next day ( he was heavily criticised by the rest of Top Shed staff for doing this) Nowadays how many weeks off would the driver get?
About 30 yrs ago i was on the midland main line when we were stopped for about 30mins. Finally moved to see the aftermath of a PUT on the up

Now i am not saying that was neither correct nor incorrect procedure, but that how it was, over the recent years there seems to be this culture of every tom dick and harry involved all standing in a circle point fingers and saying 'not my fault'
and not only on the railways The road organisations also take the attitude that every severe crash is an 'crime scene' and roads are shut for hours.There doesnt seem to be anyone to take charge of clearing the traffic held up, as seen in several recent crashes.

We have advanced in many areas of technology so thing could be brought back to normal asap, but it seems no one does anything to implement it.

Last year the train I was travelling on was stopped because of an accident at an accommodation crossing which killed the tractor driver. The line was closed until BTP had screened the site off from view of passing trains. This may seem OTT to some, but in this day and age the scene could well be traumatic for some. In times gone by, people were more accustomed to death and destruction. Nowadays it is very rare to see a dead body for real, and people are accordingly more shocked by the experience, particularly when it is gory. This applies to both staff and the public.

As the news about what had happened started to come through, I therefore resigned myself to a delay of an hour at least. Some of the other passengers seemed to think that there should be buses already waiting to take us on, despite it being school finishing time.

 

[Chrisgr31]

Communication when it goes wrong is I think a big bugbear with virtually everyone and I must admit is something that on occasions really irritates me. However the more I learn the more I realise that in all reality I am not sure how much it can be approved.

As someone else has mentioned part of the problem is that it takes time to get staff out to wherever the incident is. Once there they have to deal with the incident and report back.. The speed of the internet means that announcements can be, or tweeted before staff on the ground have had time to see them, often as they are dealing with complaining passengers! However this makes the staff look out of touch.

TOCs dont have scores of spare staff ready to get drafted in

 

[ComUtoR]

Bill Hoole who was driving 60508 when it overturned and killed his fireman reported for work the next day ( he was heavily criticised by the rest of Top Shed staff for doing this) Nowadays how many weeks off would the driver get?

Difficult to say really. If you hit the person at speed you might get a red mist over the front of the window. That could put you into quite a shock. Not sure how that would affect me. You can get a window that is completely shattered by the force of the body hitting the windscreen that you can't move the unit and are quite shocked that the body didn't come through into the cab. I think that would impact me quite a bit.

There is also the reverse where you don't even know that you killed someone because there may have been just a knock to the side of the unit that you barely noticed and the Signaller had to stop you and inform you that you just killed someone. It may even be the case where multiple services were running over the body all morning, as was the case recently with the 'artists' on the Catford Loop. So you may just be informed that your service may or may not have run over the body. It may even be a case where you came back to work within a reasonable time because the person who was under your unit survived but was in hospital, however he just died and Management needed to let you know. I think that may cause me to take a few weeks off, maybe because it was playing on my mind for weeks and then knowing they didn't survive caused me some distress.

Dunno really. It's hard to say how it would affect me as a Driver and how much time I should take off, or be concerned that other Drivers may need to cover my work or if I was ok to even return to the cab, or potentially suffer from mental health issues because I just killed someone with my train. Generally I think that a potentially career ending incident needs to be treated with some respect and that maybe that fear of losing your job, sleepless nights leading to medication, coroners court, witness statements, and flashbacks of body parts underneath your train; might, and I'm not saying everyone, but just might affect people differently.

About 30 yrs ago i was on the midland main line when we were stopped for about 30mins. Finally moved to see the aftermath of a PUT on the up

I think the current generation is too litigious for a TOC to take a chance at others witnessing body arts strewn across the track.

and not only on the railways The road organisations also take the attitude that every severe crash is an 'crime scene' and roads are shut for hours.There doesnt seem to be anyone to take charge of clearing the traffic held up, as seen in several recent crashes.

We had one recently. It transpires the guy was pushed onto the track. A clear case of murder. If that was mopped up and cleared up without investigation then the murderer would have got away with it. Weirdly the murderer returned to the scene of the crime a few days later and was himself almost hit by a train that was going near 80mph and missed him by less than an inch. Thankfully that 'near miss' was correctly reported and investigated and the suspect taken into custody. The two Drivers who missed him by the a whisker had no time off and were normal duties the very next day.

We have advanced in many areas of technology so thing could be brought back to normal asap, but it seems no one does anything to implement it.

Hoover + Pressure washer ? Maybe automation could continue with the unit in service with a shattered window as the Driver doesn't need to see out. Maybe to at least move the affected unit into the nearest station or passenger loop ?

I think with the advent of *FFCCTV the incident is recorded automatically so they could use that as evidence to show the sequence of events and combined with OTMR data resoring evidence we can check if the Driver used the horn correctly and at least attempted to use the emergency brake before hitting the person, or indeed persons (As sometimes its a child, teenager, mother and daughter, young adult, OAP and sometimes more than one at the same time)

I think with onboard screens nowadays you could display the front camera ( this has been a requested feature) and maybe you could send live updates on the clean up progress ?

*Forward Facing Closed Circuit Television

 

[ComUtoR]

Can someone ITK explain how a PUT affects train service 30 odd miles away?

ITK ? PUT ?

The PUT

PUT ?

Sorry
His second line was a bit ambiguous i read it as it the PUT being near Clapham

PUT ?

a PUT in any less a time is again unrealistic.

ITK I can't figure out and I'm going to assume that PUT is Person Under Train. But the person is not always under the train. Typically they get knocked out of the way or bounce off the window/side of the train. Shouldn't PUT be POT as in Person on the Track ?

Apologies for being a bit of a pedant but I feel if were are diminishing such an incident and reducing suicide to a TLA (three letter acronym) then we should at least be accurate. I am however, reminded of the forum rules that require acronyms to be explained.

 

[AM9]

I suspect that 'ITK' is 'In The Know'. 'PUT' would be 'Passenger Under Train' which is more likely to be a serious injury than 'Person On (the) Track', which would include tresspasers.
I believe that the most practical way to inform passengers about their likely delay would be via Twitter or a link through the TOC's website. An announcement (maybe directly from control) on the train PA should advertise the the link and leave the driver to deal with his responsibilities in the delay. That would also prevent information from multiple sources creating confusion.

 

[ComUtoR]

I suspect that 'ITK' is 'In The Know'.

Thanks, that makes sense and was bugging me a bit.

'PUT' would be 'Passenger Under Train' which is more likely to be a serious injury than 'Person On (the) Track', which would include tresspasers.

PUT doesn't really fit. Unless of course the person (surely can't be a passenger at this point) is actually under the train. The recent incident on the Catford Loop highlights that PUT wouldn't fit in that situation and when you hit someone it often doesn't result in them going under the unit or even when they are run over the unit may pass over before it comes to a stand. Person hit by train is the most reasonable euphemism so maybe an abbreviation to PHBT is more appropriate ?

The phrase 'one under' was used quite a lot when I first started. Now we just avoid using any TLA, phrase, euphemism or otherwise and all seem to just understand what happened and sort of avoid any direct terminology.

We had a REC recently where the Driver was relaying that the PUT could be heard screaming under the unit. Maybe that would be where PUT is used correctly. Maybe if that was announced to passengers on other services it would highlight the severity of the incident and that with clear communication to the passengers they could be able to judge any potential timescales. Maybe with regular updates on how far away the ambulance and emergency services are ?

 

[fairysdad]

Sorry... but...

We had a REC recently . . .

REC?

 

[ComUtoR]

Railway Emergency Call