Great Western Coffee Shop

All lines are currently blocked at Twyford due an 'emergency incident'. From what I can gather on Twitter, the train affected is 1P24 0808 Oxford to London Paddington (scheduled to be an HST) and passengers have been moved from one coach due to smoke. Some tweets are mentioning a 'fire on a train' but hopefully whatever's happened is reasonably minor.

EDIT - some suggestions that the 'fire' might be an electrical one on a power car. (and I know it's not really an infrastructure problem but just avoiding starting a new thread.)

From http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/live-fire-train-near-twyford-11348606 (http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/live-fire-train-near-twyford-11348606)
a ^small electrical fire which was out on arrival^.

It now looks like the train affected was a Class 180 and the fire was in the middle car (coach C).

Apparently the 180 on 1P24 Oxford to Paddington has self-combusted at Ruscombe this morning. Reported as small fire in centre coach - attended to by fire brigade. All lines have now been reopened, though there are considerable residual delays.

The fire bridge attended as standard, the incident was dealt with by the onboard crew. I say incident as I don't know wether there was a fire or if it was just a lot of smoke.

Advice is now that cancellations/delays/disruption expected until 2 pm (was previously advertised as midday)

RMT have taken the opportunity to politicise this incident, with the BBC functioning as their propaganda machine. The fact there is a driver on the train and possibly some catering staff is completely ignored:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-36321344 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-36321344)

Both BBC Oxford & Berkshire report it was a London-Oxford service. I guess we know better?

Time to fit smoke alarms inside the trains?  A driver wouldn't know anything about it until, a) They were alerted by a member of staff or a passenger, or b) It caused enough damage to affect the train's systems.

In the vast majority of cases, the former is quick enough to stop anything major happening.

Sorry, not sure if I was clear, but I meant that the driver and any other staff on board would almost certainly have assisted directly with the evacuation or in protecting the train. To solely credit the train manager with the safe evacuation is a discredit to any other members of staff on board as they most certainly would have been involved in helping the SLF off the train, it's generally a team effort when things like this happen.

Ah, I see what you mean.  Though it has to be said that having a second fully trained member of staff, other than the driver, on board all trains makes these incidents a hell of a lot easier to deal with.  Not that the second fully trained member of staff has to be a 'guard' of course.

Are there no engine fire/overheat sensors to give a warning to the driver in the Class 180 cab?

How many people have died as a result of train fires in recent years, particularly on DOO services?

I wonder if the RMT could supply that information.

There's obviously the fire alarms and the automatic fire system covering the engine but immediately on the fire alarms sounding it'll be the drivers responsibility to get other trains stopped by hitting the red emergency button and contacting the signaller. Whilst this is happening the train manager will evacuate the affected carriage by moving passengers to other vehicles until it is safe for the train to be moved or evacuated.
The driver may then investigate the location of the fire externally by getting down on the line.

Having the train manager arrange a evacuation of that coach probably prevented passengers releasing the doors and getting out onto what could still have been an open and live line.  More passengers are likely to be killed by an uncontrolled evacuation than an actual fire itself.

I believe once the fire was extinguished the train moved under its own power to Twyford where the doors were released and passengers were free to leave the train and join another waiting on the adjacent platform.

To add to a-driver's reply, there are sensors for an engine fire/overheat, but no sensors within the train.  So, it's possible that a fire could be raging inside a carriage on a train but the driver could be completely unaware of it.

It is a risk, however small, - it just surprises me a little that some kind of sensor is not fitted within modern trains.

It probably depends on how you define "recent". 1999 Ladbroke Grove?

And I suppose how you define 'fire'. Ladbroke Grove fire was the result of a collision.

I'm struggling to recall any on train incidents in the last 20 years where fire was the only cause of death.

There was this one - though believed to be a suicide:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13063549

Going back further, there was this infamous one:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taunton_sleeping_car_fire

Perhaps the fact there haven't been many serious ones is a little bit down to luck as well as modern safety practices?

And if it's luck or modern safety practices then there's no evidence for the RMT stance of, "guard saved the day" or the that DOO is inherently dangerous.

I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I do think that having a guard (or other trained member of staff) on each service proves beneficial in the majority of on-train emergencies; equipment failure (like today), medical, or a more serious incident such as a derailment or collision.

In some cases it's beneficial only in an organisational sense with one person dealing with the train and the other the passengers.  Over the years I've dealt with a total failure scenario on both DOO and non DOO services and I can tell you that a drivers blood pressure is much lower when there's someone to take care of dealing with the passengers, whilst the driver assesses and deals with the fault (whilst liaising with signallers, control etc.) than when you're responsible for everything.

In other cases it could, in the right circumstances, be life saving.

One has to take the role of Devil's Advocate when it comes to countering the RMTs utterances.

I've little time for that particular union. They always seem to shoot first and ask questions later.

Emergency situations are, by their very nature, unpredictable. Proven statistics that additional trained staff save lives are hard to come by. We're it proven by the HSE et al that DOO is an unsafe way to operate trains then we wouldn't have it.

There's nothing wrong with the RMT wanting to protect their members jobs, but using 'safety' as the main argument is flawed.

Worth reading this RAIB report
https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/547c8fe040f0b6024100016d/R072012_120523_Kentish_Town.pdf (https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/547c8fe040f0b6024100016d/R072012_120523_Kentish_Town.pdf)


The whole report is very long but makes fascinating reading, with a "perfect storm" of faults beyond the capabilities of the diagnostic computers, communication difficulties, incompatible train couplers, passenger communication equipment that failed (loss of power) when it was most needed... and a train full & standing with no aircon for not far off three hours.

Not much then that another staff member might have been able to do, (except provide assurance) for those pax,.

With thanks to Trowres for posting details of the RAIB report on the Kentish Town incident of 26 May 2011, may I also offer a link to the discussion we had here on the Coffee Shop forum at that time, at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=9027.0  :)

Train looks like a 180, under frame engine units have very effective fire suppression systems and fire barrier.  I suspect most of what was seen was some smoke from the fire but majority would be the fire extinguisher discharge.

Does a "Train Guard" add any more to safety than a "Train Manager" in this type of incident? 

On some of the project work I was involved in for Canal Tunnels evacuation plan the addition of one extra member of train crew over the drive when there can be up to a 1000 passengers on board does very little to aid the evacuation process

The train concerned was back out in service the next day, indicating it wasn't much of an incident at all, and was dealt with very swiftly.

Or even the GTR equivalent that they want to introduce as "On-Train Supervisors"

I don't know if it is still the case, but when I joined FGW back in the early noughties all staff were trained in train evacuation as part of their induction course. This involved a trip to SPM where they had a carriage that could be filled with smoke to simulate a fire. We were trained in lateral evacuation (moving customers down the train away from the smoke), how to deal with customers in such a situation, the location of the emergency alarms and equipment, and how to safely evacuate passengers to the track side if needed. This was given to all staff, so I would expect any member of staff on board to have some idea what to do in this situation. Many staff were also trained to make emergency telephone calls - all station staff received an annual brief on this.

Train Managers/guards are safety critical staff and have two additional qualifications.

Firstly they are trained in PTS - Personal Track Safety. This sounds as if it ought to be mainly about how to keep yourself safe when on or about the track, and it certainly includes that. The main element though is about train protection in an emergency - knowing where and how to place detonators and track circuit clips to protect a stricken train. If a train derailed, the first duty of the driver and the guard is to inform the signaller and then protect the train, by walking down the line and placing detonators. Only then should they turn to helping customers. Incidentally, there are quite a lot of staff who have PTS certification to assist with their job. It was a two day course when I did it with a biannual competency test.

Secondly, they are of course trained in the safety critical aspects of train operation, the most obvious being train dispatch. They also must have route knowledge and traction safety training (eg, how to do a brake test on an HST). Competence managers will regularly audit their performance and they have a biannual competency exam.

I retired a few years ago, so things may have changed. But my own feelings are that it is highly desirable to have a second person on board a long distance service, primarily for customer service. However I see no need for them to be safety critical on trains that can be operated DOO. Safety training, including PTS, should be provided to all on board staff, so that they can assist in an emergency. But it should not be a requirement to have such a person on every train, all of the time.

Its time the RMT joined the real world.

180108 stopped tonight with fire bells ringing! 

There was the Maidenhead incident where a fire was caused by a ruptured HST fuel tank. A passenger was killed alighting from the train onto the Up Main into the path of another train. But as you say the fire wasn't strictly the cause of death.

Re the 180 it is suggested that the incident wasn't a fire on the train as such but was caused by a polythene bottle blown from the track and caught in the engine and smouldering.  So it's Network Rail to pay GWR.