Near miss with an access ramp at Norwood Junction station (RAIB)

[Starmill]

RAIB have the legal power to access phone records, unlike the TOCs, so only RAIB would find out if a driver was lying about their mobile phone use.

Arguably if the train operator thought an offence had been committed, they ought to report it to the police. The force should be familiar with the process to cease the phone and trace it, which is totally accurate of there's reasonable suspicion of an offence. Alternatively they can potentially do so without the device, as the Raib probably did here. In practice I'm sure this is incredibly unlikely, but it's totally possible in the current framework.

 

[TrainOnLine]

This isn't limited to train cabs but signalling locations too.
Only the other week RAIB published the report on mobile phone usage at a box with a signaller putting a tractor across a line with no protection.

 

[Wolfie]

This isn't limited to train cabs but signalling locations too.
Only the other week RAIB published the report on mobile phone usage at a box with a signaller putting a tractor across a line with no protection.

Interesting. I wonder what the rules are in similar industries/roles? ATC for example

 

[sharpener]

I doubt a system to track/jam staff phones would be simple or inexpensive at all, not to mention it would prevent safe usage of mobile phones for emergency communication and presumably prevent passengers from using their phones as well.

I didn't say it would be inexpensive. But for example picocell base stations cost a few £100s, cheap enough to deploy at a per-house level. Something like that would be sufficient to capture the identity (number and/or IMEI) of any phone switched on in the vicinity. And the GSM-R as well but that does not matter as it is (obviously) permitted.

Of course that would still be many £1000s when gold-plated to rail industry specs.

ETA see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher. I can see the regulator OFCOM getting exercised about the data protection implications but AFAIK it is technically very possible.

The trouble is that many of the safety systems in a cab run on the same technology as mobile phones (e.g. GSM-R).

IIRC it is all time and frequency multiplexed so individual terminals could be identified separately.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that RAIB drew attention to a report which showed that 40% of drivers believed they could use a mobile phone without detection and 18% of drivers think they can use a mobile phone without it affecting performance.

It would certainly address the issue of detection. If it were nearly 100% certain it would surely be a deterrent.

The likely issue with your second para is having a detector which is sensitive enough to detect a phone in the driving cab but not in the passenger seats immediately behind it. That also, rather importantly assumes that no work issued phones or other equipment based on mobile phone technology are in use.

A similar issue would arise with any use of jammers - anything which jammed passenger's phones would definitely be problematic.

A faraday screen behind the cab would probably be sufficient to sort that.

I am not sure about jamming in the rail context, I was mainly thinking (not for the first time) why they do not do it in prisons.

 

[styles]

We've come to accept that driving a car with hands-free phones is 'ok' unless you have an accident. In a car you need the hand more than when driving a train - for steering obviously, and in a typical urban driving scenario you're more likely to have other eejits in cars, pedestrians, etc etc, and more signs and traffic lights - several times a minute - although the stopping distances are shorter..

We've probably just accepted that if you can't beat it, you have to accommodate it as safe as you can, in a car. Is that going to be necessary for trains - bluetooth, limits on where/when/speeds etc etc.. - or blanket bans that aren't enforced if they can't be detected?

I feel as though it's been a bit different in road driving.

The legislation for using a phone while driving was originally created to address people using radios. That's why for a long time it was only actually an outright offence to hold a mobile phone while 'communicating', i.e. talking on the phone or sending an SMS, but not playing Candy Crush or scrolling the BBC News front page.

There's an entirely separate law prohibiting having "cinematographic equipment" in view of the driver, e.g. Netflix or YouTube, unless it's showing diagnostics about the vehicle, or imagery of the vehicle and its surroundings, like reverse parking cameras.

It was amended a few years ago to cover pretty much all mobile phone use while it's held in the hand, with exemptions carved out for paying at drive-thrus and emergency calls.

But the legislation has never really been designed for mobile phones, merely adapted to account for them.

I'm not a train driver, so maybe someone will correct me on this, but I can't imagine train drivers were using CB radios and the like while driving, before mobile phones became popular. Assuming that's true, then the rules about using mobile phones while driving a train will have evolved in a much different way, which will have basically been a point in time where the industry said yeah, no mobile phone use while driving, except emergencies. Whether it's handheld or in a cradle or using voice commands, it's just not allowed.

Personally, I don't use my phone for calls etc at all while driving my car, hands-free or otherwise. I in fact worked for a railway consultancy which had an employee policy against using phones while driving for work purposes, even hands-free, and that was over a decade ago. I would potentially like to see road traffic legislation brought up to date to prohibit even hands-free phone calls and messaging. But I'm not sure we have necessarily deemed it as 'ok' - we've merely omitted to update legislation to account for modern technology. The government is just notorious for being behind the times when it comes to technology.

 

[saltywalrus]

We've come to accept that driving a car with hands-free phones is 'ok' unless you have an accident. In a car you need the hand more than when driving a train - for steering obviously, and in a typical urban driving scenario you're more likely to have other eejits in cars, pedestrians, etc etc, and more signs and traffic lights - several times a minute - although the stopping distances are shorter..

We've probably just accepted that if you can't beat it, you have to accommodate it as safe as you can, in a car. Is that going to be necessary for trains - bluetooth, limits on where/when/speeds etc etc.. - or blanket bans that aren't enforced if they can't be detected?

Absolutely not! There absolutely exists the ability to detect and enforce mobile phone usage (in-cab CCTV, criminal prosecutions), it's just that the industry hasn't accepted the level of danger phone usage presents.

I understand why in-cab CCTV is unpopular with some drivers, but I don't think it would be unreasonable to have a camera present that's only checked after an incident to confirm that a mobile phone wasn't being used, similar to drivers having to undergo alcohol and drug testing after incidents.

"Doing or omitting anything to endanger passengers by railway" is a criminal offence under section 34 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, and has already been used to successfully prosecute the driver in the 2021 Kirkby train crash. Could easily be used to prosecute every driver caught using their phone with a two-year prison sentence. I have a feeling that if an example were made of a few offenders then those poll numbers regarding phone usage may fall somewhat...

 

[Krokodil]

I in fact worked for a railway consultancy which had an employee policy against using phones while driving for work purposes, even hands-free

Network Rail has such a policy.

 

[styles]

Network Rail has such a policy.

Good. Fully support this.

An emergency is a clear exception.

Otherwise, wait until finished driving, or pull over to make the call, then set back off again.

 

[Purple Train]

Unlike recent RAIB reports, this does seem to be something more of an open-and-shut case (boom boom).

Obviously the driver's inexcusable mobile phone use is the biggest factor (and I do hope that whatever issues they were dealing with have been resolved satisfactorily) but it seemed quite interesting to me that, in four years, the wrong ramp hadn't been adequately noticed or labelled.

I'm fairly sure that the ramp is labelled according to class at my local station and that is served basically exclusively by class 345s - surely a station regularly served by many stock types should have them labelled.

 

[MrJeeves]

But for example picocell base stations cost a few £100s, cheap enough to deploy at a per-house level. Something like that would be sufficient to capture the identity (number and/or IMEI) of any phone switched on in the vicinity. And the GSM-R as well but that does not matter as it is (obviously) permitted.

Yes, and would capture all the passengers' phones too.

ETA see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher. I can see the regulator OFCOM getting exercised about the data protection implications but AFAIK it is technically very possible.

Many mobile networks and private companies have these deployed for people-counting. A brief look around Chinatown/Soho in London will surface tens of them.

With 4G and 5G, passive IMSI-catchers are far less useful for any kind of tracking given that phones will generate temporary identities from the IMSI when attached to a network, meaning you can't then tie that identifier (GUTI) back to an individual person or device!

LTE (4G) – TMSI & GUTI | Nick vs Networking

nickvsnetworking.com

IIRC it is all time and frequency multiplexed so individual terminals could be identified separately.

I mean the reality is that they simply operate on entirely different frequencies, as well as entirely separate communication networks.

The problem is that your faraday cage idea wouldn't be able to block mobile signal while permitting GSM-R signals from mobile handsets (I believe we do use these in GB?). GSM-R antennas being on the roof mitigate the problem for the fixed cab terminals.

A faraday screen behind the cab would probably be sufficient to sort that.

And in all the windows and doors? Doesn't work the moment a cab window has been opened, either for some fresh air, for a change of staff, or simply for guard dispatch!

Metal attenuates RF signals a lot, but I'd still expect phones to pick up something in many cases, even if very weak!

Of course, if you make the femotcell very weak, then the device will simply connect to the "normal" mobile network outside the train instead!

Really, the solution for this is driver monitoring, like CCTV, and verifying this as part of random data downloads.

 

[computerSaysNo]

Why are drivers against in-cab CCTV? Surely if you're doing nothing wrong then you've got nothing to be afraid of/nothing to hide?

Especially if the CCTV is only stored locally and only retrieved in the event of an incident.

 

[saltywalrus]

Why are drivers against in-cab CCTV? Surely if you're doing nothing wrong then you've got nothing to be afraid of/nothing to hide?
Especially if the CCTV is only stored locally and only retrieved in the event of an incident.

I don't think it's completely irrational - I know I wouldn't want to be working in a high-pressure job with the knowledge that someone could be watching me without me realising. But I think it's a reasonable measure as long as steps are taken to ensure that it's not viewable live, so it can't be a tool for managers to "watch over" drivers as they work.

 

[fishwomp]

Why are drivers against in-cab CCTV? Surely if you're doing nothing wrong then you've got nothing to be afraid of/nothing to hide?
Especially if the CCTV is only stored locally and only retrieved in the event of an incident.

Well that wouldn't solve the problem: we're trying to stop incidents by being able to police the policy - so it needs to be retrieved randomly not just after an incident. There is already RAIB access in the event of an incident.

 

[boiledbeans2]

Why are drivers against in-cab CCTV? Surely if you're doing nothing wrong then you've got nothing to be afraid of/nothing to hide?
Especially if the CCTV is only stored locally and only retrieved in the event of an incident.

The passenger-facing CCTVs are the same, aren't they? Passengers being recorded all the time, but only retrieved in an incident, e.g. assault, etc.

 

[bramling]

Arguably if the train operator thought an offence had been committed, they ought to report it to the police. The force should be familiar with the process to cease the phone and trace it, which is totally accurate of there's reasonable suspicion of an offence. Alternatively they can potentially do so without the device, as the Raib probably did here. In practice I'm sure this is incredibly unlikely, but it's totally possible in the current framework.

I think the difficulty with that would be that it wouldn’t be long before it ends up with a situation where a manager reports a driver to the police for suspected phone use, and then when the records get pulled it turns out there was none. From an employee relations point of view that would be absolutely toxic.

It might be more suitable to simply have a situation where as part of someone’s contract of employment they consent to having their phone records randomly checked, in the same way as they consent to various forms of D&A testing.

Then have a proportion of phone records checked on a random basis, and of course post-incident. It would be necessary to have some checks and balances in there, perhaps the phone companies being obligated to supply records which show calls/messages made but redacted in terms of the actual number.

Of course, there’s the issue that for established drivers this would require a change to their contract of employment.

 

[dub]

It's pretty clear in our policy at work that if you're caught with your phone on in an active cab you can say goodbye to your job and the union won't help you. It needs to be off and in your bag and not checked when changing ends in case you get bad news and are then distracted on your next journey.

The easiest way of reducing that % of people who think they can get away with it is a regular campaign of buffer stops checks where managers are watching you pull into a terminus, asking to check where your phone is and showing that it is turned off.

No need for expensive blocking solutions or CCTV in cabs.

 

[andy33gmail]

Once the need to block the door operation was recognised, good practice would at least be to have some form of mechanical keying on the ramp. Introducing this retrospectively might not be practical, however it shouldn't need RAIB to point out the obvious need for labelling the ramps with the train types they were intended for.

You don’t even need that. Just design the profile of the ramp so it substantially blocks the movement of the door.

The likely issue with your second para is having a detector which is sensitive enough to detect a phone in the driving cab but not in the passenger seats immediately behind it. That also, rather importantly assumes that no work issued phones or other equipment based on mobile phone technology are in use.

A compromise might be a camera which is activated by, say:
-Manual request by the driver
-Phone signal detected in cab
-AWS acknowledgement delay
-Door operations

At which point you’re not continuously intruding, just monitoring at safety critical times & when there’s a possible infringement

Not a million miles away from plastering road junctions with CCTV

 

[fishwomp]

-Phone signal detected in cab

It needs to also trigger for WiFi .. as that can do calls.. and distinguish between Joe Public sat in the front of the first carriage.. I don't think this is the solution...

Not a million miles away from plastering road junctions with CCTV

Exactly. Life is full of intrusive camera technology, every shop.. every town centre.. . Did every track worker get a say when they installed cab front cameras? Did every guard when they installed in the carriages?

Random checks - can even be done by AI so no human watching, and a human to take a look if it looks or sounds like there's a phone out

 

[cats_five]

Unlike recent RAIB reports, this does seem to be something more of an open-and-shut case (boom boom).

Obviously the driver's inexcusable mobile phone use is the biggest factor (and I do hope that whatever issues they were dealing with have been resolved satisfactorily)

If their personal circumstances were so pressing I think they shouldn't have been driving.

 

[357]

Here's an idea. Before we implement in-cab CCTV...

Let's create a cab environment where drivers don't have to urinate in bottles or out the cab door.

And let's create a trustworthy system where manages can't spend all their time looking at footage to find drivers picking their nose, scratching their bum, or not wearing a tie.

I remember during COVID working on a fleet that could be remote downloaded and certain managers spent their entire day working from home writing up drivers for little things. I was personally picked up for 0.44mph over the speed limit for 21 seconds, and holding the couple button for 4.8 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jun 2026 ==

It's the flimsy excuse of "personal issues" post event that really irks me. The cynic in me thinks they're told to say this by the union.

Complete rubbish. ASLEF take a zero tolerance approach to phone use and even put stickers up in every cab saying this.

 

[Dave W]

I've just read this report - the Swiss cheese is in play again; without the ramp being wrong, and needed for that train at that exact moment, the distraction-prone driver may never have been spotted. RAIB have been quite pointed here and the relatively short report suggests they are in no doubt about where improvements are required.

I remember during COVID working on a fleet that could be remote downloaded and certain managers spent their entire day working from home writing up drivers for little things. I was personally picked up for 0.44mph over the speed limit for 21 seconds, and holding the couple button for 4.8 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

That's utterly dreadful. Micromanagement at its absolute worst.

Whilst there are nuances in every job, I'd be seething if there was CCTV over my shoulder at work, and I simply work in an office.

 

[fwsmVor]

Should ramps be retrofitted with a sticky-out metal thing that points into the train and physically obstructs the doors as a last resort to stop interlock being obtained?

 

[gravitystorm]

I'm surprised that the only line of improvement with the ramps suggested is to label which ones go with which classes of rolling stock.

There's still a few big holes in the swiss cheese model here:

• The labels that I've seen at other stations are on the casing hoods attached to the wall, not on the ramp itself. So when you are fitting the ramp, there's nothing visible (like a big "378" label on the top surface) and there's no corresponding label on the floor or adjacent to the door, for a cross check. It really needs a double-check where both numbers are visible at the same time (and you could maybe even point at both as part of the fitment checks, Japanese-style).
• The issue of cross-compatibility was mentioned in the report, but without being addressed by any recommendations. If 378 ramps need a closure arm, and 377 ramps also fit onto 378s but don't have a closure arm, then perhaps fitting all the ramps with closure arms would be sensible? If you have two tools that both fit a machine, and using the wrong tool has a massive safety implication, it seems like relying on labelling alone isn't enough and you either design them not to be compatible or you design them to be compatible in a safe way.

 

[edwin_m]

The issue of cross-compatibility was mentioned in the report, but without being addressed by any recommendations. If 378 ramps need a closure arm, and 377 ramps also fit onto 378s but don't have a closure arm, then perhaps fitting all the ramps with closure arms would be sensible? If you have two tools that both fit a machine, and using the wrong tool has a massive safety implication, it seems like relying on labelling alone isn't enough and you either design them not to be compatible or you design them to be compatible in a safe way.

That seems entirely sensible. I think I read somewhere they are trying to move away from the multiplicity of different ramps towards a single design, and this would be an obvious step (as it were) in that direction.

The easyJet pilot I spoke to on 21.06.2026 seemed to say otherwise.

Maybe EasyJet do but it's not general. If it was then it would be known definitively who if anyone shut down the engines at Ahmedabad.

 

[swt_passenger]

Should ramps be retrofitted with a sticky-out metal thing that points into the train and physically obstructs the doors as a last resort to stop interlock being obtained?

That’s how the correct Class 378 ramps work, there are photos earlier in this thread, but they’re also discussed at length in the RAIB report, with numerous detailed photos.

 

[Cowley]

The discussion about CCTV has been moved to a new thread which is here:

Should trains have CCTV fitted to monitor what’s happening in the cab?

Whilst there are nuances in every job, I'd be seething if there was CCTV over my shoulder at work, and I simply work in an office. mods note - split from this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/near-miss-with-an-access-ramp-at-norwood-junction-station-raib.289731/ I agree that the...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[sharpener]

If you have two tools that both fit a machine, and using the wrong tool has a massive safety implication, it seems like relying on labelling alone isn't enough and you either design them not to be compatible or you design them to be compatible in a safe way.

100%.

Surprising the railway does not try to read-across from industries that do this kind of thing as second nature. Car manufacturing anyone?

I am also surprised the manufacturer of all these various ramps does not seek to rationalise them. Perhaps they have tried and come up against the brick wall of fragmented railway procurement. Perhaps they have no incentive as they benefit from having to make so many different types.

 

[bicbasher]

The 700s only ever use 3 and 4
5 is Southbound Overground and some Southbound Southerns, 6 is almost always only Southern i think just the Tat & Cat

5 is Caterham and Tats for same platform connections after the Southbound Windrush leaves.

 

[MCR247]

Is part of the issue with different ramps on 377s and 378s due to the different styles of doors? Do 377 ramps stop interlock being gained with the plug doors and 378 ramps with their sliding doors?

 

[edwin_m]

Is part of the issue with different ramps on 377s and 378s due to the different styles of doors? Do 377 ramps stop interlock being gained with the plug doors and 378 ramps with their sliding doors?

The report explains that the ramp that should be used for the 378 has pieces that stick out beyond the top of the ramp itself, so they get in the way of the sliding doors closing. The 377 ramp doesn't have these, but as it's a plug door the ramp itself prevents it closing.