Great Western Coffee Shop

this morning was a 143 instead of the LHCS which failed last night.

i travelled from YAT-BRI and it was packed to rafters which is surely a health and safety risk. the conductor apologised for the overcrowding but if you wanted to wait 20 mins a crosscountry service was calling additionally at YAT and NLS but when questioned if FGW tickets were valid on the CC he didnt reply!!!

Of course they would have been, otherwise what is the point of making the additional calls.

The 2nd loco-hauled set seems to have a fairly high failure rate?

yeah it has had one coach locked out of use this week due to electrical problems but i caught it home tonite 1453 off BRI and it was all up and running with all coaches in use!!

according to the top knobs at FGW it is not a health and safety risk,the more packed the train is in an accident the less likely serious injuries will occur due to people not getting chucked down the carriages on impact!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i beg to differ personally remember the crush injuries at hillsborough?

i did wonder why the Manchester Piccadilly train was showing up on the departures board @ Yatton this morning!

Actually, that's the position of the HSE, not something that FGW have invented for themselves. See http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/iacs/riac/091003public/crowdpres.pdf (http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/iacs/riac/091003public/crowdpres.pdf), noting particularly pp. 20-21. I can't find the original report right at the moment but this makes HSE's position on the issue clear.

Comparisons of train overcrowding to Hillsborough are specious (and quite frankly potentially offensive to those involved in that appalling incident). The numbers of people involved and the situation bear very little resemblence.

It may be specious to compare a train crash to Hillsborough, but a similar incident could arise when a heavily (over)loaded train is involved in an incident where most exits are blocked. The nature of human behaviour in such incidents can lead to panic with resulting crush injuries or deaths. The circumstances may be very different but an overloaded 143 with only one or two exits operable could give rise to additional fatalities above and beyond the initial incident/crash/derailment.

I wonder of the logic of removing window hammers from trains.....

the safety hammers have been moved from most trains now due to laminated windows being fitted. they would rather the windows didnt shatter and cut people when if it crashes. but trap you inside instead!!!

With 'diesel' stock, the risk of a serious fire is ever present following a crash. I'm not sure I'd appreciate being unable to exit a train through a window if circumstance dictated. I appreciate that laminated windows lessen the risk of pax being defenestrated during a derailment, and also cut down on the risk of injury from flying glass. However, when everything has come to rest and you have a fire, just how easy is it to break through a laminated window?

I'm open to correction, but I believe that the current vogue for laminated glass in the windows of passenger vehicles has something to do with the Watford Junction incident in 1996; a North London Railways passenger train formed of class 321 stock passed a signal at danger and collided with a second class 321 train on an ECS movement. The sole fatality was a passenger who was ejected from the train through a toughened glass window. Interestingly however, the accident report that I can find does not include the fitting of laminated glass to coaching stock as a recommendation.
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HSE_Watford1996.pdf (http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HSE_Watford1996.pdf)

Again, I'm open to correction, but I think I recall reports from the Ladbroke Grove crash mentioning that the window hammers were fairly ineffective on the toughened double glazing in the HST. Presumably they would be even less effective against laminate. Having said that, I had thought that the FGW HST refurbs were originally provided with a few toughened "breakable" windows per coach which were labelled as such and had hammers located nearby. However I don't think the windows are labelled anymore and the window hammer locations have been blanked off as well. Whether this is a response to vandalism or due to some other cause I have no idea.

This thread was initially concerned with a heavily loaded 143. These (like the refurb'ed HSTs) no longer have window hammers but I'm unsure as to whether the 143s (or indeed other DMUs) had laminated glass fitted during their recent refurb. Any insiders on the forum able to shed some light on what is the current safety case for preventing/allowing egress through a train window following an accident? Surely the risk of vandalism or theft of window hammers should not supercede their use in an emergency.

Given the apparent lack of crashworthiness of Pacer stock, as demonstrated in the Winsford accident of 1999 (see http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4304.msg35837#msg35837 (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4304.msg35837#msg35837) and numerous other posts passim), it doesn't look like you'd need much more than a decent pair of scissors to fight your way through the body work of a 143.

most of the dmu's still have their emergency hammers on board but instead of having clear breakable covers on them they had grey or white film over the top of the breakable cover to deter vandals as they think they are no longer there but if you read the safety notices they clearly state they are still there. but i do know they have been removed from 2 car 158's due to laminated windows it is a fleet campaign by FGW!!!

all FGW stock has/will have laminated glass fitted throughout (not 143/142 due to single pane glazing)

the rest of west fleet were fitted on refresh except 2 emergency exits windows per coach,these are also going to be changed for laminate and hammers removed at some point.

with regards my other post i was not comparing a train accident to hillsborough just the injuries that could be sustained in a packed train should it have a collision,i did not intend any offence and apologise if any was caused.

As all the windows are now laminated on HST which are virtually unbreakable window hammers have been removed.  It has been found that it is safer for people to be contained in the coach in an accident.  At Ufton Nervet for example some people died as a result of being thrown through a broken window.  Also in the Cumbria Pendolino accident many lives were saved as the windows did not break.