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The report must be wrong when it says the lady was in the only wheelchair place on the train. That would only be true if it was a 5 car but then the whole train fits on the platform.
It can't have been a 9 car as the wheelchair spaces also fit on the platform. It must have been a 10 car.
A 10 car (2 five cars coupled together) will have 2 wheelchair spaces and in normal formation both spaces fit on the platform. So in this case the if the lady had been put in the space at the rear again the issue would not have arisen as that will always be on the platform.
In this case the front 5 cars must have been reversed with the first class section with the wheelchair space at the very front of the train. Then at Bath Spa unfortunately it will be beyond the platform on arrival.
I can’t believe the way this thread degenerated into travel times from Bath to Bristol and configurations of carriages. The issue is one of appalling neglect and incompetence by GWR staff. End of story.
Lots of questions are being asked here which nobody is going to kmow the answer to, in order to stimulate debate and consideration. Nobody here was there.
Well, no, because it's not a scenario which would ever come about. I'd ask how their daughter was doing first. That's who I actually feel sorry for. I am myself disabled, I claim PIP and have the railcard. I had a stroke - which I very fortunately recovered from to the extent I can be (almost) fully mobile. There but for the grace of God etc.
I am acutely aware that we are all just a stroke or a car accident or a heriditary disease away from being in a wheelchair. Another stroke might do me in and leave me in the same situation as the complainant here. And it is absolutely incumbent on the railway to be as accessible as it can be, both under the law, and as a moral principle. And these types of threads really bring out a normally concealed attitude in a minority that tell me that some members don't ever have to consider anyone else's needs and some people don't realise how utterly degrading having to crawl off a train is when you cannot walk.
In response to me pointing out the grandparents could have waited about an hour or driven to Bristol (which is on the way), we are told variously a few theories that might justify the choice to let a disabled person "crawl like a dog" off a train - that Bristol isn't nice to drive in and it might cost nine pounds if the car was very old. And these are valid objections to picking up or waiting for a disabled relative who would otherwise suffer the most humiliating treatment as a vulnerable person? And the people suggesting the parents wouldn't foot £30 (that they should not have been asked for, nice one GWR) to get back to Bath are really calling them out. We see exactly the lack of empathy which has caused this issue to happen in the first place. £30? £9? Half an hour of your day? To stop this treatment? Of course we are unlikely to ever know the reason, but the theories are certainly illuminating.
Anyway, my apologies for derailing the thread, but it is possible to believe that more than one thing can be true at once. This is not victim blaming. Remember the victim here is actually the disabled person, who is not being blamed or criticised in any way - who deserved far better treatment from GWR - who almost certainly broke the law here. Her parents or grandparents aren't the victims here.
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I can’t believe the way this thread degenerated into travel times from Bath to Bristol and configurations of carriages. The issue is one of appalling neglect and incompetence by GWR staff. End of story.
The configuration of the train is one of the fundamental issues here, notably how it is too long, wasn't communicated as a risk, and was specced with disabled spaces in end vehicles to run routes where there are some very short platforms. This is a risk which has been designed into the system, and it is a very important one to consider.
There's a breakdown in how it's being read I feel, to me it is obviously the railways problem and they should have sorted it. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of the location but certainly in my time as both an SSM and a signaller, permission to set the train back would have been given if the circumstances were explained.
Obviously there multiple failings by the operator and any feasible option should have been agreed to before having this poor girl crawl through the train.
I felt you also asked, well why didn't the family (including the victim) just come up with a better solution, and that's where I felt there was some victim blaming going on.
As I said a misreading and clearly not your intention. Apologies for that.
There's a breakdown in how it's being read I feel, to me it is obviously the railways problem and they should have sorted it. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of the location but certainly in my time as both an SSM and a signaller, permission to set the train back would have been given if the circumstances were explained.
Obviously there multiple failings by the operator and any feasible option should have been agreed to before having this poor girl crawl through the train.
I felt you also asked, well why didn't the family (including the victim) just come up with a better solution, and that's where I felt there was some victim blaming going on.
As I said a misreading and clearly not your intention. Apologies for that.
In this case the front 5 cars must have been reversed with the first class section with the wheelchair space at the very front of the train. Then at Bath Spa unfortunately it will be beyond the platform on arrival.
That makes sense. Presumably no-one at Paddington, nor the member of staff on the front set, realised that there would be an issue at Bath, so that is an area where better training is required.
Would the Train Manager, even if stationed in the rear set throughout the journey, not have been aware that there was a passenger requiring assistance in the front set?
If you have no use of your legs, and have to drag yourself along the ground using your arms/hands - is that not the definition of crawling? What other single verb could you use to describe that? “Drag” is surely not much different or better than “crawl”.
I hope that GWR offer to refund her for the ticket that she had to purchase to get back from Bristol. The question arises though as to why she didn't explain to staff at Temple Meads what had happened, they'd surely have endorsed her ticket to get to Bath, given the circumstances.
She didn't go to Bristol. She got off at Bath - albeit with geat difficulty. And although she may have thought she would have to pay for the extra round trip if she did go to Bristol (she would have been unable to buy a ticket at Bath to go to Bristol in the first place), staff are usually sympathetic to people who have been overcarried through no fault of their own.
To me the obvious question is why not train to Bristol Parkway or all the way through to Newport or Caerphilly? Perhaps they were doing things in Bath as a family first.
But this is all beside the point. It should be considered from the point of view that Bath was her destination - her later road journey to Caerphilly is irrelevant. She wanted to get off at Bath, yet she could not do so
Quite.
Caerphilly is a red herring. The press article says she lives in Bath, but also says she lives in Caerphilly. It is irrelevant where she lives - her plans were to alight at Bath.
Apologies, I wasn't plain enough. What I was getting at was that crawling is a word that speaks of humiliation, punishment etc. so the media always use it as the most powerful word to highlight the failures and the neglect. Meaning what a dreadful thing has happened. These events are not common, not difficult to sort out and should be handled well by senior staff who treat them as very urgent and important. For the passenger of course and for the reputation of the railways.
They may not be "common" as in happen all of the time, but they certainly do seem to be more common than they should be (it isn't hard to find multiple examples of this happening). So if they aren't difficult to sort out why on earth do they keep happening?
They may not be "common" as in happen all of the time, but they certainly do seem to be more common than they should be. So if they aren't difficult to sort out why on earth do they keep happening?
This was clearly a distressing event for the passenger involved and it clearly should not have happened. However, if the railway is simply not capable of reversing a train 10 metres, then the advice of the GWR staff to stay on the train to Bristol, change and return to Bath in an appropriate platformed coach was probably fairly sound. Personally I have always found GWR to be one of the better TOCs and their staff are normally quite good.
Perhaps a learning point for the railway is trains should leave rear carriages, rather than front carriages, unplatformed when their is a short platform? This way the train could shunt forward in such a situation.
I find the lack of effort from all of the railway employees laughable.
A few months ago at my heritage railway I had a situation where a rep for an experience company wanted an elderly wheelchair bound passenger to hobble down a coach to their “assigned table”.
I firmly told him no. Meanwhile these employees couldn’t be bothered to find any solution, other than telling the woman to purchase a new ticket.
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The report must be wrong when it says the lady was in the only wheelchair place on the train. That would only be true if it was a 5 car but then the whole train fits on the platform.
Or more likely that is what the lady was told when she was boarded onto the train (or maybe the one in the other set was already being used or for some reason unavailable). The staff at Paddington really should know about the limitations of 10 car trains at Bath spa since it is one of the major destinations from there, or maybe they have just got far too used to the service being shortformed as 5 cars!
then the advice of the GWR staff to stay on the train to Bristol, change and return to Bath in an appropriate platformed coach was probably fairly sound.
The issue there is that you are adding a not insignificant amount of time and effort onto the passengers journey. You are talking not just actual time on the trains (between 25 and 40 mins depending on services taken) but also the time needed to change trains, and the waiting time at Temple Meads and all the effort that would require. You are likely talking over an hour in reality, maybe longer if the wheelchair space is not available on the first service back to Bath. I don't think that is really an acceptable solution. They were also apparently told to buy an extra ticket from Bristol to Bath which is also not acceptable (and no doubt they would have refused delay repay had the person tried to claim it).
The issue there is that you are adding a not insignificant amount of time and effort onto the passengers journey. You are talking not just actual time on the trains (between 25 and 40 mins depending on services taken) but also the time needed to change trains, and the waiting time at Temple Meads and all the effort that would require. You are likely talking over an hour in reality, maybe longer if the wheelchair space is not available on the first service back to Bath. I don't think that is really an acceptable solution. They were also apparently told to buy an extra ticket from Bristol to Bath which is also not acceptable (and no doubt they would have refused delay repay had the person tried to claim it).
The advice on the extra ticket is clearly wrong - the customer would be able to travel back on their existing ticket and claim delay repay too. I don't think the hour delay is a good solution but it is a solution that should have been enacted. Of course in an ideal world the platform at Bath would be long enough and the passenger should not have been put in the carriage they were.
This case has uncanny echoes for me over an incident in Scotland around 1990. At that time InterCity was running a few HSTs from King’s Cross through to Glasgow Queen Street. This was to warm the market before the introduction of electric services through to Glasgow Central the following year.
A very frail individual in a wheelchair turned up at Edinburgh to travel to Glasgow Queen Street. The next train was an HST. The Senior Conductor welcomed the passenger into the rear First Class carriage, which had the only wheelchair space.
On arrival at Queen Street it was realised that the rear carriage was wholly off the end of Platform 7. There was no way that the train could be re-positioned. So, the only solution was to take the passenger back to Edinburgh. On the way the Senior Conductor had the bright idea of putting them off at Falkirk High, to reduce the passenger’s delay.
ScotRail staff at Falkirk High discovered that they had a stranded vulnerable passenger on their hands. The knew that the platform for Queen Street was completely inaccessible for wheelchairs at that time.
Whilst the staff were contacting Control to agree the next steps the passenger became extremely ill and sadly passed away. But in those days before social media the tragic story never became widely known.
This was clearly a distressing event for the passenger involved and it clearly should not have happened. However, if the railway is simply not capable of reversing a train 10 metres, then the advice of the GWR staff to stay on the train to Bristol, change and return to Bath in an appropriate platformed coach was probably fairly sound. Personally I have always found GWR to be one of the better TOCs and their staff are normally quite good.
The advice was not, because it was given after GWR had already accepted responsibility for carrying her to a destination at a timetable. Any suggestion that GWR's failure to properly discharge their duty to the passenger should put the passenger to inconvenience is automatically unreasonable.
The advice was not, because it was given after GWR had already accepted responsibility for carrying her to a destination at a timetable. Any suggestion that GWR's failure to properly discharge their duty to the passenger should put the passenger to inconvenience is automatically unreasonable.
If the passenger ends up at Bath 3 carriages off the platform, what other solution is there, given the operational constraints which might have been in play about setting back?
The problem was caused long, long before the passenger got to Bath, and ought to have been spotted several times.
Good on you. It's amazing how surprised or even offended staff (in all industries) are at hearing this especially when not accompanied by swearing. Most British people are just so agreeable and silently swallow their desires and requirements, it's a rare thing to encounter.
I’ll just throw in, for balance, that I’m a guard and handle multiple passenger assists most days, both on my own and with station PA teams. The PA app is invaluable, excellent and easy to use, and nearly every assist goes brilliantly for everyone concerned.
The disasters that we hear about in the media are, in my experience, extreme outliers; Swiss cheese failure situations, where all the holes have sadly lined up.
Or more likely that is what the lady was told when she was boarded onto the train (or maybe the one in the other set was already being used or for some reason unavailable). The staff at Paddington really should know about the limitations of 10 car trains at Bath spa since it is one of the major destinations from there, or maybe they have just got far too used to the service being shortformed as 5 cars!
The issue there is that you are adding a not insignificant amount of time and effort onto the passengers journey. You are talking not just actual time on the trains (between 25 and 40 mins depending on services taken) but also the time needed to change trains, and the waiting time at Temple Meads and all the effort that would require. You are likely talking over an hour in reality, maybe longer if the wheelchair space is not available on the first service back to Bath. I don't think that is really an acceptable solution. They were also apparently told to buy an extra ticket from Bristol to Bath which is also not acceptable (and no doubt they would have refused delay repay had the person tried to claim it).
I was going to make exactly the same point. It isn’t “just” a case of going to Bristol and back. Firstly it’s going to add a significant amount of extra time to the journey, but there’s no guarantee that some other problem is isn’t going to arise to aggravate things further.
Continuing to Bristol is a solution in order to get things moving in the absence of being able to do anything else, but it’s absolutely not a decent outcome in any way shape or form.
The solution to these things is for the processes to be in place to ensure they don’t happen in the first place, which means firstly designing processes to make these sorts of situations unlikely to happen, and secondly to ensure staff know what they are doing. This incident seems the have highlighted issues with both.
I’ll just throw in, for balance, that I’m a guard and handle multiple passenger assists most days, both on my own and with station PA teams. The PA app is invaluable, excellent and easy to use, and nearly every assist goes brilliantly for everyone concerned.
The disasters that we hear about in the media are, in my experience, extreme outliers; Swiss cheese failure situations, where all the holes have sadly lined up.
So, does the app ‘validate’ or ‘resolve’ undeliverable bookings? I would have thought that any attempt to book someone into the leading vehicle of a 10-car train for Bath in the Down direction would immediately throw up a “Computer says ‘NO’. Abort mission” message.
If the passenger ends up at Bath 3 carriages off the platform, what other solution is there, given the operational constraints which might have been in play about setting back?
The problem was caused long, long before the passenger got to Bath, and ought to have been spotted several times.
We agree about when it should have been spotted. On the operational constraints, I'm afraid the other quoted comments leave me unwilling to accept that they were necessarily irremediable - or had even seriously been explored. That comes from both the complete failure of staff on the ground to properly recognise that GWR had fouled up (notably through suggesting that she pay for the privilege of being rerouted), and the lack of any suggestion of options being explored
So, does the app ‘validate’ or ‘resolve’ undeliverable bookings? I would have thought that any attempt to book someone into the leading vehicle of a 10-car train for Bath in the Down direction would immediately throw up a “Computer says ‘NO’. Abort mission” message.
Does anyone know if there was a specific rationale for placing the accessible areas in end cars on the Hitachi units? The Southeastern units are the same IIRC. I’d have always thought it would be more preferable in the middle, which is something Thameslink seem to manage to get right.
I feel that for many railway employees it is more weaponised incompetence/malicious compliance rather than being awkward or being too uncomfortable to intervene.
For example, the driver/staff say they cannot reverse, yet none of them thought of changing cabs.
So, does the app ‘validate’ or ‘resolve’ undeliverable bookings? I would have thought that any attempt to book someone into the leading vehicle of a 10-car train for Bath in the Down direction would immediately throw up a “Computer says ‘NO’. Abort mission” message.
Does anyone know if there was a specific rationale for placing the accessible areas in end cars on the Hitachi units? The Southeastern units are the same IIRC. I’d have always thought it would be more preferable in the middle, which is something Thameslink seem to manage to get right.
