Getting on a moving train

[BazingaTribe]

I know this is not something you can do in the UK at all nowadays but I remember a journey I made from Łódź to Warsaw on Polish railways 20+ years ago that started with me hopping on just as the train was moving off. I was trying to get to Okęcie Airport to meet my mum and that was the absolute last train going that way that would get me in on time. I was a dozy language student at the time -- nowadays I'd be there an hour before reading my phone, and anyway I'm lame mobility impaired so it would be virtually impossible. I also wonder whether any Polish rolling stock would even allow this.

Has anyone else done this? Recently? In the distant past? Where? When? Why?

 

[Gloster]

Just about anybody reasonably fit who lived on the Southern Region network in the days of the slammers will have done this. It was a totally unremarkable sight to see besuited and bebowlered middle-aged gentlemen with briefcases and umbrellas opening a door on an accelerating EMU, swing themselves up and in, and slam the door behind them. It was the same in just about any area that still had slammers. Ah, happy, carefree days when it was your own fault if you became a one-under.

But be careful. Somebody once did this on a Bournemouth fast when he swung himself up to a guard’s door, which opened inwards, as the train was leaving Waterloo. Unfortunately and unusually the door was locked: he had a very exciting ride until the train was stopped at Clapham.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Hah. I remember travelling on a few 'slammers' when I was a teenager on South West Trains but they were on the way out. They were fun and I feel like I remember them as a bit drafty (I went on one to my LSE graduation from Reading to Waterloo in 2001) but not hard to see why they were disposed of as I think they might well have been at the point where the doors were not quite slamming shut.

 

[jfollows]

In what was the Soviet Union I was on the trans-Siberian from Khabarovsk to Irkutsk. At station stops I’d get off sometimes to buy things from people on the platforms. The train would start moving as a sign to re-embark, it’d trundle along for a while so that everyone who’d got off could get back on again. Nobody, especially not a foreigner, was left behind. Summer of 1984.

 

[Segedunum]

Getting *on* might well be difficult these days though I did observe in Romania this week that departing with doors open is completely normal. Particularly on the ex-SNCF RIO sets where the air in the doors is non-existent so I'd usually find myself fighting to pull them shut at speed when it got too breezy

Getting off while moving is still fairly normal there though - observed multiple trains arriving with all doors already open and people leaping out. I've done it myself once the train is down to a bit above jogging pace!

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

I remember a journey I made from Łódź to Warsaw on Polish railways 20+ years ago that started with me hopping on just as the train was moving off.

The Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski died doing that.

Cybulski died in an accident at a Wrocław Główny railway station on 8 January 1967, on his way from the film set. As he jumped on the speeding train (as he often did), he slipped on the steps, fell under the train, and was run over.

​

Zbigniew Cybulski - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BazingaTribe]

Ouch. Yeah, I think my anxiety was piqued reading about how dangerous it actually was, just like the time my late husband refused to show me the photos of what happened to his car in an accident ten years before we met for fear of me being anxious about him in the present day.

In fairness it was more like jfollows' experience of the Trans-Siberian -- it had just begun to move and I must not have had too much with me as I got on with no difficulty. But yes, not doing it ever again at all. (And I'm very lucky in the UK -- since I've had my mobility issues, the GWR dispatch at both Reading and Basingstoke are kind about holding the train if I or anyone else in need are within a few metres. Basically so long as I'm round the corner at Basingstoke platform 5 or have passed the waiting room facing Reading platform 2 and thus in sight of the officials they will let me limp across to the first door and let me on.)

And I'm very frustrated at having no prospect any time soon of riding the Trans-Siberian. It wouldn't be the same atmos as in the days of the USSR (RZhD's trains look nice and the logo is a work of art, but lack the vintage style of Soviet carriages and locomotives or the ones we travelled on between Moscow and St Petersburg in the late 90s) but following the route as far as Beijing would be the trip of a lifetime.

 

[nwales58]

... in Romania this week that departing with doors open is completely normal. Particularly on the ex-SNCF RIO sets ...

Also in Bulgaria, hauled stock with inward-opening door (not bi-fold) which didn't latch so provided useful air flow.

In Romania, last month, it was not just that the old UIC doors close around 5km/h still in use ...

Interregional's procedure on ex-DB 628s is: guard dispatches from the (barely perceptible) platform, in the dark waving a torch (at least CFR use yellow to reduce possible confusion with other people's torches). Guard joins the train at middle door as it moves off with all doors still open. Doors then closed, I assume by driver as these were DOO-capable.

Surely the DB 628s had traction - door interlocking in Germany?

Where a road bisected the unlit (non-)platform at Seica Mare halt - look at Google Streetview, it's almost unbelievable - the centre doors were plonked on the crossing, passengers got out both sides, the guard dispatched from the road on one side with no sight of the other. In the dark.

Another occasion, at Videle, I was on the Ruse service on the platform closest to the station building blocking the crossing. A following Craiova pulled into the next platform. Our train was dispatched. A late passenger for the Craiova shouted something at our guard, ran into our train and straight out the other side to catch his.

So getting on and off a moving train is still normal in europe, just not western europe.

 

[Gloster]

Another occasion, at Videle, I was on the Ruse service on the platform closest to the station building blocking the crossing. A following Craiova pulled into the next platform. Our train was dispatched. A late passenger for the Craiova shouted something at our guard, ran into our train and straight out the other side to catch his.

Shades of Tony Hancock.

 

[rvdborgt]

Surely the DB 628s had traction - door interlocking in Germany?

I'm not quite sure about that. ISTR 628s leaving and the guard's door closing while it had already started rolling ('accelerating' is a bit exaggerated for these shifting dunes / 'Wanderdünen').

 

[The exile]

I'm not quite sure about that. ISTR 628s leaving and the guard's door closing while it had already started rolling ('accelerating' is a bit exaggerated for these shifting dunes / 'Wanderdünen').

You certainly can remember that. Given the sluggish acceleration of these units and the fact that German door locking only engaged above a certain speed [I assume that applied to 628s as well] setting off while the doors were still closing was probably the best way of minimising both delay an accident risk. Must have been interesting where they were used on “turn up and go” frequency commuter services stations with high platforms, but on my local line I can’t imagine it would ever have been a problem (though if it had, it would have been a big problem!)

 

[Segedunum]

Can concur that dispatch on the 628s operated by Regio Calatori is similarly lax - though the guard would usually be stood inside at the door when the train started rolling.

Doors of course closed at leisure.

 

[Cloud Strife]

I also wonder whether any Polish rolling stock would even allow this.

Still quite possible on old battered EN57s in summer when the doors are wedged open.

 

[BazingaTribe]

I must get back, at least to Łódź . I got distracted by the Baltic States and haven't been in a long time, although I've found uses for my language skills in Vilnius. I wouldn't go anywhere north east of the Suwałki Gap right now (my grandparents were on the last bus out of Dubrovnik when their summer holiday was rather rudely interrupted by the JNA in 1991 and although I think I can gauge the geopolitical landscape better than they could, I'm not sure I want to risk it) so maybe a trip back to ride the rails again would be fun.

 

[Tester]

The doors of many Thai loco hauled carriages have no interlocking whatsoever, and it is quite normal for them to be permanently open (inwards).

Entry and exit on the move (arrivals and departures are relatively sluggish) is totally mainstream.

 

[peteb]

I think the SNCF TER loco hauled trains with ex Corail carriages with inward opening doors can still technically allow one to hop on as the train moves off and they do "unlock" as the train pulls into a station. Terribly dangerous however particularly on low platforms where a trip or slip could send you under the train. I think a lot more TER ex-corail stock is now the sliding door type so they're locked before the train moves. I'll see if I've any photos of the inward doors from travels this year .....

 

[peteb]

I think the SNCF TER loco hauled trains with ex Corail carriages with inward opening doors can still technically allow one to hop on as the train moves off and they do "unlock" as the train pulls into a station. Terribly dangerous however particularly on low platforms where a trip or slip could send you under the train. I think a lot more TER ex-corail stock is now the sliding door type so they're locked before the train moves. I'll see if I've any photos of the inward doors from travels this year .....

Yes, Nice with a TER to Marseilles 14th June 2024.