How many examples are there of passengers detraining off their own back on Guard operated trains compared to DOO services?
A fair few incidents have occurred involving Southern trains, including incidents at Norbury and Redhill. Also SWT notably at Woking a few years ago which led to lots of big changes in the way SWT and Network Rail respond to service disruption.
It makes no difference to be fair, once someone wants to detrain, they will do it regardless and will ignore rail staff as they think they know best.
There was the SE incident last Summer too, although it was a MUCH smaller fire with a lot less smoke. That incident occurred on an evening SE service with only 4 coaches and the fire was affecting the shoegear right at the front of the train. Fair to say I was extremely against what the passengers did for that incident as the driver had told them to move into other coaches, but pax had ignored the driver and detrained themselves, walking past the actual fire, amazing how they thought that was safer than staying on the train in another coach !!
My opinion is unchanged and they should have stayed on the train, though they would have most probably had to detrain anyway, but at least it would have been supervised with no power in the rails.
RE the picture, it was posted on Twitter by a passenger on board the affected train this morning.
