Great Western Coffee Shop

The 17:25 down from Plymouth usually has a hard time as it stops all stations bar Menheniot and is often late.
There's one driver who can get it to rattle along and keep time - he is also soooo smooth at getting away - you need a visual clue to realize you are moving.

Anyway....today was different - at Saltash Lady TM didn't return from the front of the train to dispatch but fairly quickly announced we weren't going anywhere because of a problem with a door in coach 'A'.
Nothing else was moving either as the back end is on or near the bridge.
Some hazard tape is fetched, coach 'A' evacuated and locked out of use - lots of evicted passengers struggle to get luggage out over the huge height gap to the platform - 20 minutes later we're off again.

Get to the bridges in the Glyn valley and come to a halt again - this time the driver calls for the TM via the PA - flock of sheep on the line....proceed at cautionary speed to Bodmin - strangely this delay was greeted with hoots of laughter.

I'm wondering if the faulty door is the same one I heard a TM complain about a few weeks ago ?? 

Sounds like a bit of an unnecessary faff with the door. I don't claim to be au fait with the current procedure on the main line but BR instructions to train crew for dealing with faulty doors were generally to lock the affected door out of use, label it and plug the lock to prevent any staff member going "brain in neutral" and unlocking it without thinking. The fault could then be remedied at the end of the day. Certainly nothing about evacuating a coach or strewing hazard tape all over the place.

If a door fault occours offending door must be budget locked,labelled and the handle must be hazard taped over, and if this out of use door prevents emergency egress from both ends of a coach then the whole coach must be placed out of use.
besides this situation there are another 20 reasons why a coach could be locked out of use

Fair dos, and this is a question rather than a criticism, but how does one door being iffy ever physically prevent egress from both ends of a coach, given the labelled emergency exit via the guard's office in a TGS and that there are two passenger doors in the vestibule? Isn't that a bit of an impossibility?

I would assume that in a real emergency pax could exit via the other door in the vestibule as well...

Happened last summer on a probably even busier PAD - PNZ service, think it was short formed of 7 coaches as well. The passenger doors on the TGS would not release the CDL, when being unlocked from a panel in the rear of the train. This was only noticed at Par, when the train had been doing it for at least another 2 stations, and it was already late from having a similar problem looked into. Of course mass annoyance to everyone in coach A, in fact most people from Coach A moved to first class, not sure whether the TM said they could, but FC was distinctively fuller when I got off at Camborne, than it did when I got on at Plymouth!

The emergency egress procedure states passengers much be able to egress a coach from each end and on either side, normally this becomes a problem if a door nearest the powercar in coach H , Two doors on the same side or coach A sliding door wont open. normally if door 2 or 3 on Coach A the ones joined to coach B become defective access should still be ok in coach A as emergency egress is avalible through doors 1 and 2 of coach B.

AIUI, the rules try and ensure exit on either side is possible.  You want to try and give a choice of exit sides because one side is likely to be more dangerous than the other, and if the coach falls on its side, only half the exists are availble anyway. 

 Makes you wonder how we managed without Central Door Locking.

 I suppose we had to use common sense.

slightly off-topic but a "door on the catch" for a guard is now treated as seriously as a SPAD so guards will take no chances now!

Presumably after the missing door incident over the B&H a couple of months back!

Well last week there was an HST on the B&H with a faulty door on the rear power car.  Admittedly they open inwards, but one of the rail staff on board did phone ahead to Taunton and warn them just in case they spotted it as passed through as not booked to call there.