Passengers abandon train at Lewisham with 3rd rails still live.

[Llanigraham]

Oh you obviously were there!

Have you ever walked the cess of a railway line?
Even though we signallers no longer have to pass PTS we still occasionally have to go trackside, having first set up our own protection, and I can assure you it is not easy. I didn't work electric lines but even so there are signal wires, point rodding, electric wires, plus rough and uneven ballast. In the dark all are easy to miss, then add snow on top and think about the risks involved.

 

[theageofthetra]

BBC News reporting that customers on the trains where they egressed out can claim £100 in compensation.

Can't frigging believe they would have a £100 'bonus' that crooks who egressed out can claim but maybe it's just me!

And what are the chances they suddenly find 2500 passengers were on that train?

 

[Tio Terry]

I don't think that it does. What I think that it does illustrate is a lack of education about the dangers of leaving a train.

Don't think that's true. I was discussing this with my 13 YO nephew. He said he could understand the frustration of being within a short distance of a platform and would have been tempted to go for it after about half an hour of no heating or light. When I talked about the danger of electrocution from the third rail he explained that, at his school, they got a lecture from "someone from the railway" every year who explained how to identify the dangerous third rail - higher than the others and mounted on insulators that railwaymen called pots - so he would know how to stay safe. He also knew about tripping hazards and cables. Seems the NR school education programme does actually work!

OK, it's not certain he would be safe - in the same way that no railway person could be guaranteed safety - but it does show a level of education intended to help preserve life.

 

[farleigh]

BBC News reporting that customers on the trains where they egressed out can claim £100 in compensation.

Can't frigging believe they would have a £100 'bonus' that crooks who egressed out can claim but maybe it's just me!

I don't think the word crook really is fair. I would think £100 is a token gesture but in my opinion £500 would be nearer the correct amount.

 

[theageofthetra]

I don't think the word crook really is fair. I would think £100 is a token gesture but in my opinion £500 would be nearer the correct amount.

And how do you prove you were actually on the affected trains?- bet there will hundreds of fraudulent claims.

 

[farleigh]

And how do you prove you were actually on the affected trains?- bet there will hundreds of fraudulent claims.

I don't know and I am not really interested as that should have been covered by the TOC already. They should have taken details or given out coupons. If they did not then that is a problem they will have to deal with.

My point was really that I would not feel happy with £100 but I would feel that £500 was a fair douceur

 

[LAX54]

Don't think that's true. I was discussing this with my 13 YO nephew. He said he could understand the frustration of being within a short distance of a platform and would have been tempted to go for it after about half an hour of no heating or light. When I talked about the danger of electrocution from the third rail he explained that, at his school, they got a lecture from "someone from the railway" every year who explained how to identify the dangerous third rail - higher than the others and mounted on insulators that railwaymen called pots - so he would know how to stay safe. He also knew about tripping hazards and cables. Seems the NR school education programme does actually work!

OK, it's not certain he would be safe - in the same way that no railway person could be guaranteed safety - but it does show a level of education intended to help preserve life.

Would not see much of the cables or tripping hazzards in the snow, one trip and zap ! crispy fried

 

[LAX54]

I don't think the word crook really is fair. I would think £100 is a token gesture but in my opinion £500 would be nearer the correct amount.

really that should be taken from the people who jumped ship , not the other way around !

 

[farleigh]

really that should be taken from the people who jumped ship , not the other way around !

Yeah and I bet you wouldn't have grumbled at all after three hours on the train in those conditions.

 

[LAX54]

That was pretty much my thought too. I doubt SouthEastern could have done anything differently up to the point at which the first passenger got off the train. But with hindsight (and I know things are always easy with hindsight) perhaps it would have been more sensible, once that passenger was off, the power was cut and multiple trains were therefore now stuck with no power or heating, for someone to realize that in this situation trains would become very dark and very cold, and it was inevitable that more passengers would start de-training (I hate that word) before too long,. Therefore the least bad thing to do would now be to just get everyone off all the stranded trains as soon as possible, so that they wouldn't then be continually delaying the eventual restoration of power.

A couple of other possible questions and lessons for the future that strike me:

• Trains that you can't walk through the whole train potentially make evacuation very hard. Perhaps future guidelines should be that new EMUs and DMUs that are intended to be connected together should always be built with a through passageway through to the end of the unit (On this note: how would you evacuate a class 465 if it was stuck in a tunnel?)
• There are already many reasons why having guards on all trains would be very desirable (personally I'd feel much more comfortable travelling on SouthEastern if a guard was regularly walking through the train to check tickets etc., not least in order to deter antisocial behaviour). But the events of Friday give another reason why an extra trained member of staff on the train would be very useful.
• Over how wide an area did power have to be cut when the first person detrained? Was it only cut in the area that person was plausibly likely to be in, or did the limitations of the equipment force power to be cut over a much wider area? If so, is that a possible area for improvements to the power supply equipment?
• As other people have pointed out, not having station staff trained to go on the track and to assist in evacuating trains seems a pretty big oversight. I know there's some cost to doing so, but surely, compared to the total cost of running the railway, it would be tiny? Presumably you'd be talking about having staff away on training for a week or two per year. Something like a 2%-4% increase in the number of station staff needed so you cover that, plus the cost of a couple of instructors. Seems worthwhile to me.

It all seems to surround the first person deciding to detrain after about half an hour, the REC call that followed, would cut power for a wide area as it is an emergency, this as said, then strands many trains, unavoidable, it takes time to get staff to shorten up the sections, and they have to get there too, it also takes sometime to detrain each train, even more so if there are disabled people, children, babies prams etc, there is not an infinite amount of staff, or emergency services that assist in this. Road conditions were not good, taking longer to get to wherever needed. I think had you not had the 30 min jumper, the outcome could well have been a lot different.

 

[cjmillsnun]

I don't think the word crook really is fair. I would think £100 is a token gesture but in my opinion £500 would be nearer the correct amount.

Crook is fair IMO, Trespassing on the railway is an offence.

 

[LAX54]

Yeah and I bet you wouldn't have grumbled at all after three hours on the train in those conditions.

I get the impression it was possibly self inflicted after the first person decided he had had enough in 30 mins, maybe its him who should be paying up !

 

[farleigh]

Crook is fair IMO, Trespassing on the railway is an offence.

Here's a hypothetical question for you - after how many hours would you have considered leaving the train?
We have already had one person comment that they would prefer to defecate in their trousers than walk the 300 yards to the station, so that puts the record at - what - twelve hours.
Would you have left after twelve hours?

 

[farleigh]

I get the impression it was possibly self inflicted after the first person decided he had had enough in 30 mins, maybe its him who should be paying up !

Self inflicted by another person?
So as one person left, everybody else deserved it?
Hmmm - many people would say that is illogical.

 

[trainophile]

Crook is fair IMO, Trespassing on the railway is an offence.

So is soiling a train, but many of those people had no choice about that.

My overriding puzzle is why was the train so overcrowded in the first place, so much that the guy who wrote the blog could not even move a limb to make himself more comfortable. It being the second similarly rammed train on that route in a few minutes too. How many hours should commuters have to wait on a platform before they can go home on a train that there is at least room to move around on? Surely it's this aspect that needs addressing as much as the incident that occurred.

 

[MikeWh]

So is soiling a train, but many of those people had no choice about that.

My overriding puzzle is why was the train so overcrowded in the first place, so much that the guy who wrote the blog could not even move a limb to make himself more comfortable. It being the second similarly rammed train on that route in a few minutes too. How many hours should commuters have to wait on a platform before they can go home on a train that there is at least room to move around on? Surely it's this aspect that needs addressing as much as the incident that occurred.

Southeastern were running a severley reduced service during the snow in the hope (largely successful) that they could run it reliably. Those trains that did run were all 10/12 cars long. Friday afternoon was the really bad one such that one of the three lines to Dartford had already been closed, but people who had gone to work still needed to get home.

 

[bnm]

Early in the thread the first unauthorised egress was said to have been after about an hour. Its down to 30 minutes now. Give it a few dozen more posts and we'll have someone saying that first person bailed as soon as the train stopped.

 

[trainophile]

Thanks Mike, relieved to hear it's not a regular occurrence then.

 

[fowler9]

Surely the minute someone self evacuated the whole job gets shut down and the plan should go to evacuate everybody since nothing is going anywhere until the trespasser has been found?

 

[IanXC]

Surely the minute someone self evacuated the whole job gets shut down and the plan should go to evacuate everybody since nothing is going anywhere until the trespasser has been found?

And its going to be quicker to get a suitable number of staff to each and every train you're now evacuating (I would have thought at least 5 for each train depending on how far away the access points are) than just finding the individual who is lineside and restoring power to move the trains?

The other thing that we're overlooking in much of this discussion is that much as the passengers can be detrained (in a controlled fashion or otherwise) you're still stuck with hundreds (or potentially thousands) of passengers who want to get to their destinations - presumably we have a magic replacement bus tree to solve this?

 

[LAX54]

Early in the thread the first unauthorised egress was said to have been after about an hour. Its down to 30 minutes now. Give it a few dozen more posts and we'll have someone saying that first person bailed as soon as the train stopped.

1815 stopped, 1845 got off.

 

[LAX54]

Oldsiggie, you are not quite right 2M50 arrives at the signal at about 1745, if the person detrains himself at 1845, then that is one hour, but by doing so, with 4 full trains in the area, it was inevitable that to get everyone off, would take a long time.

 

[AlterEgo]

BBC News reporting that customers on the trains where they egressed out can claim £100 in compensation.

Can't frigging believe they would have a £100 'bonus' that crooks who egressed out can claim but maybe it's just me!

That’s not what they said. It’s payable to anyone stranded for more than two hours.

Completely inappropriate to call egressors “crooks”, they did something wrong and illegal but in no way were they dishonest.

 

[AlterEgo]

Crook is fair IMO, Trespassing on the railway is an offence.

A crook is a dishonest criminal, like a thief or a fraudster.

It comes from “crooked”.

Someone trespassing on the railway by bailing from a freezing carriage isn’t a crook, although they may still be committing an offence.

Some of the posts in this thread are depressingly but predictably unhelpful and unsympathetic.

 

[swj99]

Can't frigging believe they would have a £100 'bonus' that crooks who egressed out can claim but maybe it's just me!

Calling passengers crooks just reinforces the argument that the railways are not customer friendly, and does nothing to address the very serious issues which incidents such as this hightlight.

really that should be taken from the people who jumped ship , not the other way around !

Much more appropriate would be for it to be taken from the profits of the company responsible for the problem, and not fare paying passengers who were simply trying to get away from the terrible situation they were in.

Crook is fair IMO, Trespassing on the railway is an offence.

Trespassing means to enter upon the property unlawfully, whereas a fare paying passenger is lawfully where they are, and by exiting a broken down train, they are exercising their right to leave. A requirement for them to stay on a broken down or stranded train would be contrary to their right not to be unlawfully detained.

I get the impression it was possibly self inflicted after the first person decided he had had enough in 30 mins, maybe its him who should be paying up !

Or maybe he should get an award for taking the initiative. For all he and many other passengers knew, they could have been stuck in horrendous conditions all night.

 

[Antman]

Have you ever walked the cess of a railway line?
Even though we signallers no longer have to pass PTS we still occasionally have to go trackside, having first set up our own protection, and I can assure you it is not easy. I didn't work electric lines but even so there are signal wires, point rodding, electric wires, plus rough and uneven ballast. In the dark all are easy to miss, then add snow on top and think about the risks involved.

This wasn't a bunch of drunken idiots it was commuters who I think we can assume were in the main law abiding people, the fact that they took such drastic action surely says it all?

 

[Llanigraham]

This wasn't a bunch of drunken idiots it was commuters who I think we can assume were in the main law abiding people, the fact that they took such drastic action surely says it all?

Perhaps you woud like to answer my question? Have you ever walked along the cess of a railway line?
The rest of your repsonse is irrelevant.

 

[Robertj21a]

1815 stopped, 1845 got off.

My understanding is that it was much earlier than 18.15. Most people seem to have accepted that it was about an hour - probably a pivotal time for many people who are considering taking matters into their own hands.

I've still not seen any sensible response to the various questions on here asking just how long people should be expected to stay on board - 1, 2, 4 or 12 hours. My guess is that most people will say 2 hours if they're kept informed, or 1 hour if they're not.

How much information did the passengers on the stranded train actually receive ?

 

[Bertiethebobby]

According to BBC news RAIB is now investigating, if this is like Kentish town is this will be bad for south eastern railway.

I received this reply to my enquiry with the RAIB on Monday 5th.

Thank you for your email regarding the recent incident at Lewisham. We are currently conducting a preliminary examination of the incident to understand the circumstances and determine whether to conduct an investigation.
If we decide an investigation is appropriate, we will update our website accordingly.
Kind regards
RAIB Administration Team

 

[telstarbox]

And its going to be quicker to get a suitable number of staff to each and every train you're now evacuating (I would have thought at least 5 for each train depending on how far away the access points are) than just finding the individual who is lineside and restoring power to move the trains?

The other thing that we're overlooking in much of this discussion is that much as the passengers can be detrained (in a controlled fashion or otherwise) you're still stuck with hundreds (or potentially thousands) of passengers who want to get to their destinations - presumably we have a magic replacement bus tree to solve this?

Lewisham is staffed from first to last train and you can get buses, DLR (which was still running) or taxis to a huge area of SE London including many of the stations which are usually served by trains. Admittedly it would be different for a rural shack.