I was on the 16:06 LNWR train travelling back from Lime Street after watching the Liverpool v Watford match. The train stopped at Wolverhampton and picked up lots of fans that had been to Wolves v Aston Villa at Molineux (police were already having to arrest some of these fans on the platform at Wolverhampton). Way too many passengers climb on board, there was barely any room to breathe.
Cue shouting and swearing from drunk passengers hurling abuse at one another. Train leaves Smethwick Galton Bridge just before 6pm, then grinds to a halt before we reach Rolfe Street. Conductor comes onto the speaker to announce an egress has been pulled but the doors haven’t been closed again. He struggles to walk through the train due to so many people standing in each carriage who won’t let him walk past, so he, the driver and one more on board staff walk around the outside of the train trying to get to the affected door.
They seemed to get it sorted, however the conductor then comes back on the speaker to announce that 5 more egress handles have been pulled and those doors have been opened too. The passengers on board start arguing, they think the issue is that the doors inside the train between the carriages need to remain closed for the train to move, as opposed to the doors on the outside of the train.
Passengers then decide to start self evacuating the train, around 50 people jump off and start walking on both lines (causing a line block in both directions), with those people saying they were intending on walking miles back to Smethwick Galton Bridge to get a taxi back home from there.
Just before 7pm, BTP reach the train and help remove some of the unruly passengers and they also help the conductor and driver sort out the issue of the doors being constantly opened due to egress pulls every time the train tried to move. Just as the line blocks are lifted, two passengers have medical emergencies on board. Once they were seen to, the train was eventually able to move again just after 7:15pm
