Very poor lighting on trains

[76020]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026, I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working, the coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319.
I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station.
Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

 

[Bald Rick]

Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C.

Are you sure?

Might it be that the train switched to emergency lighting for some reason (say fuse blew) perhaps a few minutes before you boarded?

Have you never had a fuse blow at home?

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

Most of my "train lights not working" have been good experiences!
Trains are very bright now, toning that down a bit is nice.

One time had a 156 on the way home from work, no lights nor engine working in my carriage (doors worked fine), nice and peaceful with the lighting provided by the setting sun to the West.

Last week I was on a Cheltenham - Cardiff 150 that was having light issues in my carriage due to the heat, we went into a tunnel and that's how I discovered the Emergency Door release sign is glow in the dark! It makes 100% perfect sense that it does, but it's cool to see it!
Obviously photo isn't the best quality due to the darkness but here's a photo I got.

 

[76020]

Are you sure?

Might it be that the train switched to emergency lighting for some reason (say fuse blew) perhaps a few minutes before you boarded?

Have you never had a fuse blow at home?

Either way, a blown fuse or emergency lighting, to me the train should have not have been running in this state. As I previously stated, it was late at night, a near empty train with hardly any lighting, this is not a safe travelling environment and can make passengers very uneasy.

 

[superalbs]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026. I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working. The coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319. I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station. Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

That looks quite nice. Count yourself lucky.

 

[76020]

Can someone take this seriously please, it is the train operating companies to make sure that their trains are as safe as possible, my journey was just after the England defeat against Argentina, therefore some people are not going to be very happy. The lack of lighting is not a positive, it could create a very unpleasant situation for someone, especially if you are a young lady travelling on your own.

 

[NSEWonderer]

Can someone take this seriously please, it is the train operating companies to make sure that their trains are as safe as possible, my journey was just after the England defeat against Argentina, therefore some people are not going to be very happy. The lack of lighting is not a positive, it could create a very unpleasant situation for someone, especially if you are a young lady travelling on your own.

But if the other carriages have working loghtin, wouldn't a pasenger simply move? That service itself didnt come up as being very busy either.

Did you report your concern to the driver or a member of staff if possible?

 

[Taunton]

Can someone take this seriously please,

We do take it seriously, many here recall old times with limited lighting, or none, eg suddenly apparent in daytime when entering a tunnel. That was just how it was. No need for hyperbole, no need for breathless Facebook posts, no issues, just "lights off", and on life went. No problem.

 

[JonathanH]

Can someone take this seriously please, it is the train operating companies to make sure that their trains are as safe as possible, my journey was just after the England defeat against Argentina, therefore some people are not going to be very happy. The lack of lighting is not a positive, it could create a very unpleasant situation for someone, especially if you are a young lady travelling on your own.

If there are working lights elsewhere in the train then cancelling the service could also create safeguarding issues, with, for example someone potentially missing a last bus, or having to wait at an unstaffed station for longer. Without in any way condoning or excusing it, the lack of lighting is not the only risk scenario.

 

[sh24]

If there are working lights in other carriages then I really don't see this as a big problem. It's a simple case of moving via the corridor connection.

 

[dosxuk]

The lack of lighting is not a positive, it could create a very unpleasant situation for someone, especially if you are a young lady travelling on your own.

Was it a very unpleasant experience for yourself? You don't need the hypotheticals. Was every other carriage on the train in a similar state? Did you inform any staff?

 

[vuzzeho]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026. I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working. The coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319. I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station. Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

Yeah, that is not really acceptable. It's good you let C2C know. I haven't really faced any situations like this, it seems like lighting failures are a pretty uncommon fault on trains here, luckily. I suppose if the rest of the train was alright then it should be an announcement at most. Maybe worth putting glow in the dark strips in the aisle?

 

[76020]

Yeah, that is not really acceptable. It's good you let C2C know. I haven't really faced any situations like this, it seems like lighting failures are a pretty uncommon fault on trains here, luckily. I suppose if the rest of the train was alright then it should be an announcement at most. Maybe worth putting glow in the dark strips in the aisle?

Thank you for seeing my point of view, to answer previous points, no I did inform any member of staff at the time, the only person I could have i formed would have been the train driver.

I will post the reply from C2C.

 

[The exile]

Either way, a blown fuse or emergency lighting, to me the train should have not have been running in this state. As I previously stated, it was late at night, a near empty train with hardly any lighting, this is not a safe travelling environment and can make passengers very uneasy.

By running the train, passengers have a choice (even more if lights anywhere else in the train were working). If they had not done so, passengers further out could have been stranded (not likely at Upminster as the District Line was presumably still running.) If it is something that happens frequently, then it’s bad; as long as it was a one-off it’s little more than unfortunate - though understandably unpleasant (it appears from the photo that the emergency lighting was on - which is probably enough for the cctv to function.

 

[bramling]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026. I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working. The coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319. I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station. Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

This feels a bit overplayed to me. If it was just one carriage affected then there’s the option to move to another one. For every passenger who doesn’t like being in the dark there will probably be another who either doesn’t care or actually prefers it.

Lighting on trains is very bright nowadays, and this absolutely isn’t to everyone’s preference.

 

[Taunton]

One of the upsides of modern life is that sudden darkness anywhere is commonly met by a range of people switching on the lights on their mobile phones. In old times the equivalent emergency light resource was someone's cigarette lighter.

 

[TRAX]

Either way, a blown fuse or emergency lighting, to me the train should have not have been running in this state. As I previously stated, it was late at night, a near empty train with hardly any lighting, this is not a safe travelling environment and can make passengers very uneasy.

So a cancellation and passengers stranded "late at night" is the better option to you ?

 

[76020]

So a cancellation and passengers stranded "late at night" is the better option to you ?

Thank you for your reply, from my outward journey, which was during the evening peak, I did notice that there were spare EMU's at East Ham depot, so they could have swapped the units with others which were available or if this coach was the only one affected, switch this particular coach out of use, this was service was formed of an eight car train.

The point that I am trying to make here is that this EMU should not have gone out in service in the first place in this state, it is poor maintenance by the train care team in my view.

The emergency lighting was not on, in the photo, the light that can be seen is coming from the rest of the coach, of which there was another five lights out. I do not know if any of the rest of the train was affected by the same problem.

I take the point that I could have moved to another coach, but why should I have to do this? the situation did not bother me, but as I have already stated, I was thinking about someone else who is vulnerable would find the darkness intimidating, for example, my wife is scared of the dark, she was not with me at the time of this journey.

I do not want to create a slagging match here, of which this has started to developed into, the original purpose of this post was to see if anybody else has had this experience.

I live in London and travel by train a lot, I find that the vast majority of trains who operate on the National Rail network and the London Underground are very well maintained in way of cleanliness and lighting, this particular journey was the exception.

As I have already stated, I will post C2C's response, they said it will take 20 working days to reply.

 

[43096]

Thank you for your reply, from my outward journey, which was during the evening peak, I did notice that there were spare EMU's at East Ham depot, so they could have swapped the units with others which were available

How do you know they were available?

The point that I am trying to make here is that this EMU should not have gone out in service in the first place in this state

How do you know it came off depot like that and hadn’t failed during the day?

, it is poor maintenance by the train care team in my view.

In your view. I am sure in the view of many others you are massively overreacting. As you said it was an 8-car train, why not just sit elsewhere rather than being over dramatic?

 

[150249]

Back on 23rd May, me and some of my mates (who I have blurred out) got the train to Exmouth. We got 150247 and the lights weren't turned on. This was the view when we went through Blackboy Tunnel just past St James Park. It was darker than it looks in the photo, my phone camera enhanced the orange lights from the dot matrix display.

 

[GoneSouth]

That looks quite nice. Count yourself lucky.

I agree. I loved the dim glow of incandescent bulbs on old dmus and mk1 coaches.

We could happily turn off half the lights on modern trains

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2026 ==

If there are lights working elsewhere and you feel safe in bright light, just sit there. If there are no lights working anywhere on the train I suspect they may cancel the service but it looks like there are in the next carriage.

This doesn’t seem to be a problem to me.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Back on 23rd May, me and some of my mates (who I have blurred out) got the train to Exmouth. We got 150247 and the lights weren't turned on. This was the view when we went through Blackboy Tunnel just past St James Park. It was darker than it looks in the photo, my phone camera enhanced the orange lights from the dot matrix display.

That's quite similar to my wider view I cut down to send in post #3, indeed you can see the same glow in the dark sign.
In my case the internal display wasn't working so it was much darker.

 

[AlterEgo]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026. I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working. The coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319. I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station. Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

That looks ideal. Better than modern stock lit up like a dentist's surgery.

 

[westcoaster]

I travelled on the 22:28 train from Upminster to London Liverpool Street on 15/07/2026. I got on the second door of the front coach and straight away I noticed that the lighting was very poor, to my right there was no lighting at all up to the interconnecting door, please see attachment, to my left there was five lights not working. The coach number was 68719 and the EMU was 357 319. I was thinking that if I was a young woman, this would make me feel uneasy to say the least.
Obviously this is very poor maintenance by the train operator C2C. I have made a complaint to C2C about this.
Ironically the very next day C2C had a press launch about two of their EMU's in the new GBR livery at Liverpool Street Station. Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

The first and most obvious thing to do, would be to inform the driver. Trains can go into emergency lights or no lights due to a fault with the trains auxiliary system.
It wouldn't take much to walk upto the cab door and knock on it (or move units at the next stop) and inform the driver ( they will wait until at a stand to talk back to you).

 

[GB]

Thank you for your reply, from my outward journey, which was during the evening peak, I did notice that there were spare EMU's at East Ham depot, so they could have swapped the units with others which were available or if this coach was the only one affected, switch this particular coach out of use, this was service was formed of an eight car train.
The point that I am trying to make here is that this EMU should not have gone out in service in the first place in this state, it is poor maintenance by the train care team in my view.
The emergency lighting was not on, in the photo, the light that can be seen is coming from the rest of the coach, of which there was another five lights out. I do not know if any of the rest of the train was affected by the same problem.
I take the point that I could have moved to another coach, but why should I have to do this? the situation did not bother me, but as I have already stated, I was thinking about someone else who is vulnerable would find the darkness intimidating, for example, my wife is scared of the dark, she was not with me at the time of this journey.
I do not want to create a slagging match here, of which this has started to developed into, the original purpose of this post was to see if anybody else has had this experience.
I live in London and travel by train a lot, I find that the vast majority of trains who operate on the National Rail network and the London Underground are very well maintained in way of cleanliness and lighting, this particular journey was the exception.
As I have already stated, I will post C2C's response, they said it will take 20 working days to reply.

How do you know the train entered service like that and didn't develop the problem somewhere else?
How do you know the "spare" units were actually spare and not defective or diagrammed to other services?
If you didn't advise the driver then how are they supposed to know there was a problem and get it reported/fixed/taken out of service?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Ultimately it will depend on the TOC's Defective On-Train Equipment (DOTE) Plan and whether a "competent person" is available or not.

At my TOC, if it's during hours of darkness and only one coach is affected, that coach gets locked OOU along with any "stranded" coaches. So if, for example, you have a four-car Driver Only Operated train being driven from Coach 1, there's a defect in Coach 3 and you don't have a competent person available, you'd have to lock out Coaches 3 and 4. If you've got a competent person who can travel in the back cab, you only have to lock out Coach 3.

If the whole train is affected, you have to detrain at the first appropriate location (in the OP's example, Upminster will almost certainly be classed as appropriate) and run the train ECS to the nearest depot. While that's happening, you hope that Control are arranging for the following train to call additionally (if necessary) to pick up the passengers or, if it was the last train of the night, trying to arrange road transport...though bear in mind that can take two hours or more to arrive, even in Greater London.

 

[The exile]

The point that I am trying to make here is that this EMU should not have gone out in service in the first place in this state, it is poor maintenance by the train care team in my view.
The emergency lighting was not on, in the photo, the light that can be seen is coming from the rest of the coach, of which there was another five lights out. I do not know if any of the rest of the train was affected by the same problem.

So there was lighting available in the coach concerned (and in the neighbouring one as well)?

 

[76020]

How do you know the train entered service like that and didn't develop the problem somewhere else?
How do you know the "spare" units were actually spare and not defective or diagrammed to other services?
If you didn't advise the driver then how are they supposed to know there was a problem and get it reported/fixed/taken out of service?

As I have already stated, I have informed C2C by using their complaints website and they should deal with it and I did not inform the driver because it was late and I wanted to get home. The driver should have noticed this as well when he changed ends, so he should report this.
The train care maintenance team should have seen this issue beforehand, or have seen it since my journey and hopefully fixed it by now.
I am no electrician but the five lights that were out were not equally spaced which suggest to me that have become defective over time, in other words it has just been left and it was not emergency lighting, these were in addition to the section that was completely without lights.
Obviously I do not know if the spare units were required for a later diagram, but at the time, it was the evening peak, my guess is they were spare at the time and not required for duties later that day, there could have more units in the train car shed itself, but I cannot answer that.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

The driver should have noticed this as well when he changed ends,

A couple rows of seats, still well lit but not bright is hardly a reason to demand the train not move.
The driver may well not have noticed, or made the reasonable assumption that a couple rows of seats with reduced lighting (as per your photo, the area was still clearly visible) wouldn't be an issue, which it isn't, indeed many people here have agreed with my position that it is a rather ideal place to sit given the very bright lighting of trains now days.

They can't just magic up a train or a fitter suddenly, if they had cancelled it to bring a new set out, or delayed it until it was fixed you would've been significantly delayed.

 

[yorkie]

Either way, a blown fuse or emergency lighting, to me the train should have not have been running in this state. As I previously stated, it was late at night, a near empty train with hardly any lighting, this is not a safe travelling environment and can make passengers very uneasy.

You could have waited for the next one, if you felt the train shouldn't have been running.

I would prefer the train to run, so that people can make the choice, than have the choice removed from them.

I do not know if any of the rest of the train was affected by the same problem.

If you chose to remain in an area of defective lighting, when there were other coaches available, that suggests it wasn't a problem?

If you felt the environment was unsafe, you would presumably have gone to another carraige? I would expect anyone who wasn't happy with the environment in that coach to have tried another one.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2026 ==

Have any of you had bad train lighting experiences?

Only that most trains are far too bright these days, especially late at night; airline and coach companies easily beat train operators in this regard.