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I would be very interested to find out what possible excuse FGW can have for this:

I was on the 7:21 from Tilehurst to Ealing Broadway this morning & we were well on time when suddenly we came to a halt at West Ealing. (Please note that this is NOT a short platform & we were stopped fully alongside it.)

The driver anounced that he was going to have to change ends & reverse back to Hayes & transfer to the fast line because of a "problem" at Acton (he had no more details).

At this point people who were going to Ealing Broadway, including myself, asked him as he passed the window to let us get off the train now at West Ealing but he would not let us because the train "was going to proceed."

WHY?????? We were parked, as I have said, fully on the platform at W Ealing for a good 10 minutes. Surely we the fare-paying passengers should have had the right to decide whether we wanted to get off now & walk/bus it to Ealing Broadway or take our chances with the train.

But this story gets much better....! We eventually got back to the bay platform at Hayes, whereupon another train, which would originally have been a long way behind us, stopped at the adjoining platform & picked up passengers - and then left in front of us! (We had already been overtaken by at least 2 other trains).

And then.... we proceeded back to Ealing Broadway on the same relief line we had been on in the first place!

So if we had just stayed parked at West Ealing for a bit longer until they reopened the line, we would still have been better off.

We eventually arrived at Ealing Broadway only a few minutes short of an hour late. If I had got off at West Ealing when I wanted to, I could have walked it in half the time.

If anyone can explain this fiasco away, i would be very interested! (I don't blame the driver BTW, he was just doing as he was told.)

Assuming the whole train was within the platform (or could be shifted a short distance as it was reversing to make that the case), I'm surprised the driver didn't comply with your request and let whoever wanted to get out at West Ealing quickly get out - however this might have caused a bit of confusion with any punters waiting for a London train at West Ealing.  But, it would have seemed a reasonable thing to do.

It is worth remembering that the driver was on their own in this situation.  No guard to assist him/her and an unfamiliar move in returning back to Hayes (wrong line to Hanwell I assume?) to make sure they were happy with - it's easy to get a little stressed out in such a situation, especially with a packed commuter train.

It's not uncommon for a problem to be resolved whilst action to avoid it is taking place though.  In some cases it's better to do something in case the situation becomes harder to resolve than expected - even if sometimes the delay is actually more than if the train had waited at West Ealing.

Yes there were a few people at West Ealing - but plenty of people on the train to tell them not to get on it! (There was no logical reason why they'd have wanted to get on & go back to Hayes, after all!)

We were indeed fully on the platform - I was in the rear carraiage, which was correctly positioned for a 6-car train.

By the time we got to Hanwell we had crossed onto the correct relief line for the direction of travel. We then crossed back to the bay platform after Southall.

Does anyone know what the "problem" at Acton actually was though?

None whatsoever, at an unsceduled stop....

No more "unscheduled" than the detour!

If the train was going to be standing in the station anyway, surely pragmatism should outweigh the tyranny of the "diagram" and allow the doors to be opened?

The purpose of the railway is to provide a "service" after all, not to conduct what appeared to be an unsuccessful experiment in logistics at our expense.

'Elf & Safety' rules, unfortunately....

Don't get me started!

Please explain exactly whose health or safety could possibly be put at risk by opening the doors on a platform in a station?

(I've already said that the train was fully on the platform which was full length).

If one or more doors had been off platform, your point would be valid (even though personally I credit passengers with enough common sense to walk down the train to the appropriate door, I understand that you are not allowed to trust us.)

You need paperwork to stop additionally, called a "Special Stop Order (SSO)"

Driver didn't have one, so is protecting his job.

It wouldn't be Jane. ChrisB is just plucking that phrase out of thin air - as everyone is prone to do these days.

During an out of course situation unscheduled stops can easily be arranged. Provided it is safe to do so (and the necessary authority sought from the Signaller - verbal authority is just as good as a paper authority, devon_metro!) the driver could have used their initiative and opened the doors to let people out. Indeed I have witnessed it happen at the very same station when Paddington was closed during the bomb attacks and trains were backed up.

West Ealing has a straight platform so although the driver would have been the other end of the platform than usual he could use the 'look back' method of dispatch with no safety compromises at all.

Thanks Industry Insider. Glad that common sense can sometimes prevail even if it didn't in this case.

The driver did in fact spend time at both ends (since he had to change ends in order to reverse the train) so could have let us out first from the proper end.

I do get the impression however that whoever was communicating with the driver wasn't exactly giving him a lot of information, so as I said it wasn't his fault. I'm assuming from what he said in his announcements that he asked them if he could open the doors & they told him no.

Still no answer as to what did happen at Acton.....

There's your answer. The signaller had given the driver the right to proceed, and he needed to complete the manoevre as quickly as possible, to free up whatever blocks were needed to go wrong side back to Hayes....presumably the signaller was holding trains at signals to achiebve this move?

I doubt the driver would have been given the right to proceed - that's not the way it works (though he may well have said that to get out of the situation). If the driver was changing ends then he would almost certainly have been instructed to call (via the cab radio) the controlling signaller when he'd changed ends so that the 'move' could have been run through with the driver set up in the correct cab and able to observe the position light signals he'd have to obey. During that change of ends is when the driver could have made a quick announcement and opened the doors, closing them when he'd got to the other end.

One thing that does puzzle me is why the train was in West Ealing platform though? The signal is off the end of the platform, so the train would normally be half-on and half-off the platform if it was brought to a controlled stop at that signal. If that was the case (Jane, are you sure ALL of the train was platformed?) it would have probably been more trouble than it's worth to reposition it, etc.

With one up line effectively blocked by this unit, and (presumably) the down relief about to be needed, surely the signaller would have been setting the route while the driver was changing ends?

If so, my point standfs that time was of the essence. And clearance would have been needed from FGW control, as well as the signaller.

I agree that time was of the essence, and that might be why it didn't happen, or it could have been that the driver never requested it?  Either way, it might have been beneficial to the passengers and added very little time to the delay - but as we weren't there it's difficult to say.  The route probably would have been set by the signaller as the driver changed ends (just like the passengers who wanted to get off would have had the opportunity to do so whilst he was changing ends - assuming the whole train was platformed as I questioned in a previous post) but the driver would have gone nowhere without a full briefing as to the requirements of the move without speaking to the signaller after he'd changed ends. That tallies with Jane's remarks about the driver spending time at both ends of the train. 

The up line was being blocked by whatever the problem on the line ahead was. Clearance would not have been needed from FGW control to open the doors of a train already in a platform in an out-of-course situation, the Signallers authority would have been enough.

Outside an emergency situation, I think I beg to differ....I reckon the driver would need to be required to ask / advise.

Here's another slant...

What if during the (unscheduled) station stop the doors fail, or any other disaster occurs, that results in the relief lines being blocked even longer and I suspect the signallers priority was to clear it.

Oh and for the record, it looks like signalling failure.

I'm with Devon Metro on this....

Err ... that's a risk for any station stop, isn't it?  If the problem was signalling failure and there was no suggestion what so ever of train malfunction, it seems odd not to let the doors be opened.  This wasn't a 142/143, you know  ;)

But - hey - hindsight is a marvellous thing; it's all very well to say "xxx should have been done" after the event.  I'll bet most of us have made snap decisions, and later realised that we could have elected to do something else that would have been prefereable if only we'd had the luxury of time to decide.

Was simply suggesting a scenario for the likely decision, what with the amount of paperwork to do the simplest tasks these days.

"What's that Sir, you wish to lean out of the window to open a door, i'm afraid I will have to conduct a risk assessment before I can allow that"

could it have been as a result of the fatality at aldermaston this morning causing congestion/stock displacement.
not sure of the area/working in that area myself but i know a turbo was involved in the fatality.

An initial report of the Aldermaston / Ufton Nervet incident this morning is posted at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4783.msg60422#msg60422

What if indeed - I suppose there might be a 0.00001% chance of that happening. Which is probably significantly less than the chances of an angry commuter assaulting the driver when told he couldn't get off and the net result would be an hours delay and a detour via Hayes.

Jane and her fellow commuters didn't do that of course, but at the same time they left the train at Ealing Broadway no doubt pretty pee'd off and thinking that the railway industry has once again shot itself in the foot.  The average passenger really must be bemused by some of the nonsense and red tape that stops basic common sense at nearly every turn.

However, given the circumstances as described this morning, I very much doubt there is a Driver Manager in the land who would question a drivers decision to open the doors in the situation described today after getting verbal permission from the Signaller.  In my time as a driver similar situations cropped up occasionally and I always got the backing of my line manager - they do realise that you're on your own dealing with a situation like that and support any sensible actions to help the situation.  That being said, I can't blame a driver for erring on the side of caution.

At the end of the day you're looking at the time to ask the question 15 seconds, time to make an announcement 30 seconds, time to look back and shut the doors when he's changed ends 15 seconds.

Like I said though, I have my suspicions that only part of the train was on a platform given the location of the stop signal 100 yards off the end of the platform.

Wouldn't the driver technically be assisting the guard in that situation...?  ;) Or is the driver now in charge in such situations following the much-argued about rule book changes of a few years ago?

Is this one of those rail industry masonic hand shake moments.

If there is NO guard and only a driver - surely thr can be no ambiguity - and if there is, then the rail industry should hang their head in shame

I'm with Chris B and the other Nay voters on this one, train is not scheduled to stop, Network Rail have not given permission for the stop to uplift or set down passengers and FGW would strictly speaking not be insured for passengers joining or alighting at that station.

Now imagine driver opens doors, passenger slips and falls down the gap, who do you recon FGW will pin the blame on? The driver would probably be out the door and the next week commuters would moan that their train has been cancelled due to a lack of traincrew.

Even worse, a passenger tries to board after the driver has shut the doors and taken power and the passenger falls down the gap, with do despatch equipment to look at the driver would have no way of knowing.

The rule book is quite clear when it says:
If you are working a passenger or empty coaching stock train with
power-operated doors which is stopped at a platform it is not
booked to stop at, you must not release the doors.

Thank you for that, readytostart.

I really don't like to be pedantic (honestly! ::) ), but it does help if someone can actually answer the question, "where does it say that?"

C.  ;)

Spot on.

Right way, Wrong way, Railway!  ;)

For goodness sake people. This is a FGW train, at a FGW station platform that identical FGW trains stop at all day long. In the circumstances we have been discussing the driver has confirmed all of his train is on the platform, and Network Rail have agreed via the signaller for the driver to open the doors (nobody has suggested that they haven't in any post). To suggest that FGW would be any more liable to passenger slips and falls or that slips and falls are any more likely to happen than on any other train that is scheduled to stop there is silly.

To suggest that for some reason FGW would not be covered by insurance is frankly absurd. What happens when a train has to terminate as a failure? If we follow your line of thinking then if the train's not due to call at whatever station the passengers would just have to stay on board.


As for dispatching the train with no DOO equipment, if we take the Oxford to Paddington route as an example what do you think happens in the up direction at Radley, Appleford, Cholsey, Pangbourne, Twyford, and Acton Main line?  There is NO DOO equipment provided at these stations.  Drivers dispatch themselves via the 'look back' method.  Once they have looked back, closed the doors, observed that all is clear then they depart. After they have taken power there is no requirement to continue to observe the train - funnily enough it's considered more important to observe the signals! 

That is exactly what would have happened at West Ealing had the driver opened the doors before departing in the opposite direction to normal.  Furthermore, what's to stop that scenario you've cooked up happening if the doors hadn't been opened at all anyway?


As for rule book quotes (which module did you get that from anyway - after a quick search I can't find it!), as is often the case, with the authority of the signaller - and in some cases the TOC's control -  you can pretty much do whatever you want to!

For the record regarding the problem it appears there was some signalling problems at Acton.

Not really, sorry, just wasn't making myself clear. Of course when there is no guard on a train it's all up to the driver. The old railway rule book, which had been in place since the dawn of time (and possibly longer) contained the magic phrase "The guard is in charge of the train", thus making him responsible for all such operational decisions. However, those words were taken out of the rule book a little while ago. I'm just curious to know whether or not the guard would be in charge of dealing with that situation now or the driver (on a service that is operated with a guard, of course).

Sometime around 1990 I was on a loco-hauled slam-door train which crawled very slowly along the Up Main past West Ealing and Ealing Broadway and then was switched onto the Up Relief to Acton Main Line where it stopped. And we waited and waited. Then the guard announced that there had been a complete signalling failure at Paddington and we would be stopped at Acton ML for 'some considerable time'. So knowing the area quite well I alighted from the train and walked about half a mile to North Acton where I caught the Central Line and probably arrived in work rather earlier than anyone else on the train.

Now in spite of the fact that the train wasn't booked to call at Acton ML and I'd guess that loco-hauled trains were never booked to call there, I managed to alight from the train and leave the station without sustaining any injury. I remember even that the guard saw what I was doing and made no attempt to stop me.

So, does that mean that the railways are now less safe than they were 20 years ago? Is a Turbo less safe to alight from than a Mark 1 or 2 carriage?

Health & Safety Rules are more stringent & applied more widely.

Wow, this must be my most quoted post to date!

Chris, if memory serves it's TW1: Preparation and Movement of Trains: General
Not got my bad with me so couldn't say for certain.

As for some of the knickers in a twist brigade (nice to see you're having a rest from XC baiting) of course on the authority of the signaller or a TOCs control you would be able to release doors or detrain, I would however assume that in this situation the signaller and FGW control were rather busy dealing with a signalling failure and would like all staff on the ground to follow instructions as safely and efficiently as possible to enable a contingency service to run.

I have mixed feelings on this one, after reading all the comments so far.

1. It appears that staff "on the ground" are disempowered. There are good reasons for ensuring that control know what is going on. Occasionally, those reasons will include safety issues. If control had the ability to deal with all arising issues within seconds, then there would be no reason for ground staff to make independent decisions. But in any serious incident, control has "more serious" issues to deal with, and the passenger suffers.

2. Could driver (or guard) make an autonomous decision without affecting safety? This one could run and run (and I will let someone else start!)

3. A term appearing frequently above is HEALTH and safety. Now excuse me, but isn't stress contributory factor to a  number of illnesses? Seems to be forgotten when the rail-way is set out.

4. If we stick to safety, which was more likely, an accident detraining at an unscheduled station, or a fall on stairs by a passenger attempting to make up time / catch a connecting service?

Yep, I found it - hidden away on page 63.  I stand by my point that in this specific case, the tiny amount of added delay would be well worth the positive impression it would have left upon the passengers.  It's a judgement call for the Driver (who is the only one there on the scene to appreciate the issue).  During the conversation from the Signaller to Driver where the driver is told of the problem, Driver says 'Can I have your permission to open the doors at West Ealing to detrain some passengers whilst I change ends?', Signaller replies 'Yes Driver' or 'No Driver' - simple as that.