There's been another "incident" reported in the
Wokingham Times:
Skateboarder urged to come forward after rescuing driver stuck at Wokingham level crossingApr 10, 2014 01:00 By Laura Miller
Eyewitness Francine Twitchett said the boy averted a serious incident by lifting the barrier to hold up the gate
Francine Twitchett stands alongside the level crossing where a young man rescued a car which had got stuck between the barriersA skateboarding hero is urged to come forward after he raced to free a driver wedged under the barrier of the town^s main level crossing.
The lad, believed to be in his late teens, averted a serious incident as the silver car was trapped inches from the track, with a train heading for Wokingham station.
Eyewitness Francine Twitchett was walking into town to meet a friend on Tuesday just after 10am.
She said: ^A young bespectacled lad on a skateboard who could see the predicament, and with great presence of mind without thought for his own safety, ran across the railway line and held up the gate so the driver could back away slowly to safety. The gate then fell down.
^The young lad picked up his skateboard and disappeared out of sight, having prevented not only possible injury but a terrible accident.^
Mrs Twitchett recalled: ^It was very frightening. The red lights were flashing and the gates were down, with one gate stuck on top of a car just inches away from the railway line. The traffic was backed up all the way down Barkham Road. The driver under the gate kept blowing his car horn as did others. Nothing happened.
^It was as though everyone was frozen in time.^
Mrs Twitchett, of nearby Barkham Road, was waiting to cross the track when she noticed the skateboarder heading down Station Road.
She added: ^I felt cross with myself for not doing anything, but I didn^t know what to do.
^I wish I could have got his name but everything happened at once and nobody in any of the cars did anything.
^People say awful things about young people but he was very quick-thinking. The modest skateboard lad deserves a reward.^
Mrs Twitchett, who is in her 70s, said she was ^amazed^ nobody at the station appeared to see anything or came to help.
She continued: ^After all the millions of pounds spent on the new Wokingham station, the least one could ask for is 24-hour
CCTV▸ on the level crossing, if only to catch people going across on red lights. This was indeed a close shave.^
A spokesman for South West Trains ^ Network Rail Alliance confirmed no incident was recorded or brought to staff^s attention. He added all level crossings have CCTV.
Mrs Twitchett recalls the skateboarder wore glasses and a striped scarf.
Do you know him? Email
laura.miller@trinitymirror.com or call (0118) 918 3027.
Don't know what she - and the reporter - think goes on in that shed with big windows next to the track! And as to the
SWT▸ -NRA comment, we should perhaps say we don't now what the question was. But there are a couple of operational questions - should such an incident be recorded by the signaller? And I thought that all four barriers had to be fully down before the interlock was cleared.
It isn't clear to me what "trapped inches from the track" means, and how that can be the same as "stuck between the barriers". If the barrier was on top of a car's roof, rather than on its bonnet, it would be pretty close to the track. So it's hard to judge whether this was really a case where the rules say the car should be evacuated (however unnecessarily) or if it was always clearly safe. In either case, lifting a barrier that is not fully down is not in itself dangerous - but may be a criminal offence (if done without authorisation)!
Again, it comes down to a question of whether the signal-box window has to serve as a public telephone for emergencies.
