Great Western Coffee Shop

Out of interest, if it became obvious to a passenger that a train wasn't going to stop at a station they were expecting to alight from (ie the train appeared to be going too fast to stop in time), what would happen if the passenger pulled the emergency cord. Would they be prosecuted?

Such action would be frowned upon, not being an emergency, but I think prosecution would be unlikely.

I've seen that done - unfortunately, by the time the pax realised, they were on top almost of the station & even the emergency stop didn't stop the train until it had gone through the station. So they were delayed even further while the crew investigated & reset systems, before heading away to another station.

You may as well simply await the next stop as that'll be the shortest delay

Assuming you are confident that the train WILL stop and isn't a runaway!

Just to add to my original question - if a passenger realised that the train was approaching their station and didn't appear to be braking, what action should they do? I assume the response should be bring it to the attention of the train manager, but that is not always that easy on a busy train. If they did pull the cord and the train came to a stop just beyond the station (e.g. almost within touching distance of it), is there any way it would be allowed to reverse back, or will it always have to proceed forwards?

And just in case anyone is wondering, I'm not envisaging ever doing this myself.  :)

Going off at a slight tangent, but still relating to a 'forgot to stop' incident............

I was waiting at Pinhoe station a dozen or so years back to meet a work colleague off the 10:30 arrival from Salisbury. There were a dozen or so others waiting to catch that train. It duly appeared in the distance, but showed no sign of braking whatsoever and shot straight through the station. I immediately pressed the 'Help Point' button to advise of the failure to stop.....only to be informed that their system showed the train having stopped for a full two minutes!

Froome, I think that you are asking a very pertinent question. On an HST, you are unlikely to be able to find the train manager in time (the train doesn't have to be crowded - the rot set in at the dawn of the HST era when the (then) guard was secreted away at the end of the train behind opaque doors...or maybe was not there). On DOO trains, there isn't one other than the driver. So, should the passenger:
a) Assume that the driver has only missed the station,  but is otherwise mentally alert and operating as expected;
b) Wonder if the driver is incapacitated...but surely the safety devices will stop the train if an accident is imminent....right? (thinking Germanwings crash as I write)
c) Absorb the railway safety culture and never assume that something is OK if it might not be - so operate the alarm.
d) cross fingers and close eyes?

Open to the floor...

Thank you for posing those very thought-provoking considerations here, Trowres.  ;)

Is this almost in the nature of a new opinion poll, perhaps - simply to measure public reaction?

I did not intend this to be an opinion poll, though it is meant to encourage thought - both from would-be passengers and any rail industry staff reading. Looking at the GW advice to travellers https://www.gwr.com/plan-journey/journey-information/on-board/safety-on-board (https://www.gwr.com/plan-journey/journey-information/on-board/safety-on-board) it is clearly offering advice only for the case of an obvious emergency - there is no guidance on what to do in cases of uncertainty. How is the passenger supposed to know whether or not there is "immediate danger" ? Not just in the missing stops scenario, but others... rough riding / strange noises / scary people / etc.

We are spending money on the technology for on-board wi-fi and so on. It doesn't seem unreasonable to have a way to connect to the conductor, or for DOO, probably control room staff, to report a concern with urgency but without leaving a painfully difficult stop train/hope for best decision to the passenger.

I can't help thinking that the number of passenger who could confidently work out that the train has passed the last likely service braking point for a station, but still had not reached the emergency braking point to stop at it, is tiny. Most can't even identify the station on passing through it, since at normal speeds you can't read the name on platform signs. So I think the issue of wanting to do something - whether triggering an emergency stop or something else - will mostly apply to those of a very anxious disposition indeed.

As for the alternative, don't most modern(ish) trains have an emergency call button? Not that it would necessarily get an answer, but it should.

With many thanks for your comments, Trowres, and taking into consideration input from other members, I have now split several posts off into this new topic here, and added an opinion poll.

In view of recent events, I really think we should all be asking ourselves, "What should I do if I saw something 'not quite right' ... ?"

There does not seem to be an option to seek out the Guard/Train Manager

My thought too. Don't use the emergency stop button but the (green?) 'speak to driver' one. As for recognising the train's not going to stop, I think most people (myself included) will only do this once it's past passed the station!

There is now.  Thanks for your very valid suggestion.  ;)

Oh, I know ...  :-[

I don't believe that "seeking out the guard or train manager" is a realistic option.

Not all trains have such a person, and on those that do they may be several vehicles away in either direction, or possibly locked away. Now how long do you have to take any effective action in the event of something untoward? less than a minute in most cases.

I would do as follows.
If the train was about to miss a booked stop en-route, but without any other indication of accident or emergency, I would do nothing, better to be over carried and claim delay repay or for a taxi, than cause a commotion and very possibly add to the delay.

If the train was approaching a terminus at a grossly excessive speed I would try and force open a door as this should, on most trains, apply the brake.

If, in open country, the speed was grossly excessive, or if multiple stops had been missed, this clearly indicates that the driver may have been deliberately incapacitated and not simply taken ill, In such unlikely circumstances I would attempt to stop the train by any means.

Some thoughts ...

This has never happened to me, and I suspect my reaction would differ depending on the circumstances around.

* If there were staff available to hand (either a member of the crew or the BTP who we're so often told to ask if anything suspicious is seen or going on) then ask them right away - even interrupting a ticket sale or other conversation

* If the station skipped was an oddball in the calling pattern (e.g. a requested stop at Dilton Marsh being left out, or a call at Avoncliff on a longer distance service) I would probably just roll my eyes and bring it to crew attention  at next station if I had needed to alight.

* If the train was on the approach to some know hazard, I would tend to pull the emergency chord if I had the slightest doubt as to whether the driver was properly in control and had no immediate access to staff.  Trowres mentioned Germanwings; my father worked in a basement in the north of the City of London and started his day early.  He tells of a thump / the ground shaking on 27th February 1975.    And whilst we haven't seen any report / recommendations yet, I can't help wondering if knowledgeable passenger action might have reduced the casualties on the Croydon tram; perhaps it did - perhaps passengers did save something even worse, but not really ours to speculate on that prior to full reports, etc.   Trowres is correct is saying that there are systems in place, but they aren't error-proof and errors compound; a station being missed is the first of such a series.

In these days of good mobile phone coverage of the routes, a call to 03457 11 41 41 which is the Network Rail Emergency helpline might be in order.  National Rail enquiries -  03457 484950, I fear, would take too long and by the time you got through the initial chatter to establish you had a crisis, it might be too late.  999 might be another option. If there are any rail staff (in the widest sense - including contracted people, and key community rail volunteers and officers) they would likely be able to reach Swindon Control Duty Manager quickly, and a shout around for such / any staff off duty (who could be dozing / not route-savvy) would seem appropriate if it were more than an obvious error of mis-understanding at a request stop.

If you genuinely believe that there's something going wrong and you take action, you are highly unlikely to be fined / prosecuted even if transpires that you've add to delays.  If you were to make a habit of doing so through a fear it might be a different story.  Whilst I've never "pulled the chord" myself, I did once call the Network Rail emergency number due to track problems, and can confirm that a line can be closed rapidly.  Turned out to be a semi-false alarm in that the scour and track pumping wasn't enough to require remedial action prior to re-opening, but I'm very much aware of Glanrhyd bridge (19th October 1987) where a mobile phone in the hands of Carwyn Jones, and cab radio and quick action, might have saved lives.

I think (up thread) someone mentioned "advise to passengers". There's a limit of how much you can tell people / what they'll remember years later after being told, and there must be a concern that people will perceive dangers that don't exist.   In these days of everyone having a mobile phone, I wonder if 999 should have a "Railway Emergency" option - after all, it's not just the three emergency services any more, bringing in The Coastguard in costa areas.

I have strayed far wider than simply station overruns here ... but as the number of operational staff reduces over the years, the informed passenger becomes more and more the human eyes and ears in these mercifully very rare indeed circumstances.

 

By the time I'd gone through that checklist, the train would probably have reached its final destination!!!  :)

I'd assume that I'd got on the wrong train or that the timetable had changed or that it had been announced and I had not heard.  I'd probably speak to other passengers as a first step.

Not sure I would agree with that. Most regular travelers will recognise the approach to their own station, and have a feel for when the train should start braking. On the journey I make most often, I would certainly know as we approached Oldfield Park but before we arrived whether the train was actually going to stop there, and I'm sure that is true for many others here. Obviously I don't know the emergency braking distance, but that thought wouldn't be going through my head at the time - my thoughts would be on the appointment I would be missing if the train didn't stop, etc. And my question up thread did ask what happens if the train stops just beyond your station rather than at it - are there circumstances in which it would be allowed to be reversed or is it inevitable that it will have to head forwards?

There clearly are procedures to allow a train to travel the "wrong way" down a track.  I suspect that all such procedures start with contacting the signaller.  I also suspect that they are time consuming and eat into capacity and so unlikely to be used on normally busy routes. 

If there was a second member of crew on board I would assume that they would be aware and handling the situation.  Although if there wasn't an announcement very soon and I was personally affected then I would go and seek them out.

Going by my experience this evening assume that GWR have decided the train will run non-stop to its destination skipping scheduled stops to allow it to hit performance targets.

Which train was that?

Not always due to performance (I believe it counts as a part cancellation anyway when stops are removed?), but quite often because it will mean the next train that unit or driver works will then be on time.  That won't inconvenience passengers who wanted that train, and the less delayed trains at any one time on the network does mean other services are then less likely to be impacted and the normal timetable can resume sooner.

There are times when a train is so heavily delayed that it would be running just a minute or two ahead of the next one, and at that headway it would delay the following train too, suffering double-crowding and longer station dwells. And it may be less bad for the delayed train to take that chunk of passengers who are headed for the bigger stations only, catching up some time to reduce knock-on effects, and leave the train shortly behind to service the intermediate stations in more comfort and less delayed per-train but a bit more delay per customer on that particular journey.

I'll admit to be writing very much from a theoretic base ... on my line, with a couple of exceptions during the day a delay / skip stop on one train would simply mean waiting around for the next time the same train comes around again.  What has been done is to turn the train around 'short' so it doesn't reach its final destination at Swindon;  where the delay is around the 45 minute mark this makes sense, with ongoing passengers being able to connect at Chippenham, train back more or less on time, though care needed to ensure that intending passengers on the return trip from Swindon are not overlooked.

You might call out the performance targets ... but then the intent of the performance targets is to ensure that there's a measure of how well a TOC is doing and provide something against which they and others can measure them.  It is a tools that's a bit distorted at times ...

Normally the dead mans pedal would activate if the driver is incapacitated,  even if that doesn't work there's the signal system which automatically spots the train nearing a red light without the driver activating the button, the same with a yellow signal.

Yes, in the case of sudden illness etc, safety systems are installed and have a good record of functioning as intended when called upon.
A small but real risk in these troubled times is a terrorist attacking the driver and running the train unhindered to its destruction. MOST terrorists probably do not know how to drive a train and operate or subvert the various safety systems. Unfortunately they only need one.

Do trams have the "dead man's pedal"? Just wondering as I would have thought such a system would have prevented the fatal London tram derailment.

Can the driver override the emergency alarm which applies the brakes? If not, that's another good reason not to remove guards (they could pull the alarm and save the day if they think the driver has decided to deliberately crash the train).

It's normal to learn to drive a car, bus or lorry, there are lots of places you can learn to fly a plane recreationally and plenty of people sail motorboats recreationally, but the only place I can think of that you could learn to drive a train, other than by becoming a train driver, is a preserved line. So perhaps the various security agencies should be investigating Bitton etc? Is the new image of a terrorist going to be a middle-aged or retired man with a beer gut and slight OCD?  ;)

If a terrorist group was planning on taking over and crashing a train, I suspect that they would recruit an existing TOC driver, or someone who has recently left a train driving job and is therefore familiar with the controls and how to defeat or subvert safety systems.

The fact that the great majority of drivers would not consider such appalling actions might give us a false sense of security. They only need one  :'(

Or put someone already radicalised through the training programme as a trainee driver with a TOC.

I am sure that the security agencies have thought about it.