Archway Tube station evacuated

[DaveNewcastle]

From the Standard 18th Dec 2014:

A busy Tube station was today evacuated after reports of a fire on board a Northern Line train.

Witnesses said they saw a Tube train on fire and reported "a strong smell of burning" at Archway station in north London.

Transport for London confirmed the station was closed after the incident at around 10.25am. It reopened at around 10.55.

One witness tweeted: "Just had to get off a train at Archway because it was ON FIRE. Not even joking."

She added: "Started to smell it after Highgate but everyone just sat there. Then I got off at Archway..."

Witnesses said around 200 passengers had to leave the station after a train arrived at the southbound platform with smoke coming from it.

One commuter, who asked not to be named, said: "I was on the platform waiting for a southbound train and the train that arrived had smoke coming from it. The smell was quite overpowering and I started coughing.

"People weren't sure what to do, no one was boarding the train but station staff didn't seem to notice or so anything at first.

 

[Ivinghoe]

Typically bad reporting by the London Evening Standard on this, relying mostly on the Twitter reactions of cummuters to ascertain the supposed details of this incident. This brings to mind the incident on the Piccadilly line a few months back when there was excessive smoke on a train in a tunnel, believed to have been coming from the motors. All that can really burn there, one would assume, is grease and the accumulated dirt. In the time I've worked on the tube the only fires I've witnessed have been small scale smouldering pots or burning of rubbish, smouldering really, in the tunnels, and therefore easily put out. The sort of arcing and fusing that seems to have caused the electrical fire on the mainline at Charing X is fairly common on the tube. But I wonder if what has happened at Archway, which is reported as smoke rather than a fire, is either brakedust or an excess accumulation of tunnel dust on the motors of the train, somehow accumulating and not dispersing in the way it normally would. That's my penny's worth anyway, perhaps someone with knowledge of the engineering side of things will have a more definite theory!

 

[W230]

Twitter = lazy journalism. The Metro and ES seem rife in it. No idea if other papers are the same...

 

[Dstock7080]

No train was found to be involved.
Help Points on the platform were activated and an approaching train was asked to non-stop while the station was closed and evacuated.
Investigatations by emergency services found nothing wrong.
Station closed 31mins.