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London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

metro.co.uk

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Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#51

Post by hedora »

michaelt wrote: post #2

> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours. It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out". Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, a…

Based on the photos, "smash their way out" appears to mean "open the door with the clearly marked manual override level", and "stranded" appears to mean "had to cross a couple tracks, and walk to the nearest gap in the fence".

The text of the article suggests they had to use the emergency windows / break stuff, and that they were stuck in a tunnel without a pedestrian evacuation route (which would be illegal even here in the US where we hate trains).

The real screw up was probably lack of training of the people on duty. They should have evacuated the train (i.e., opened the doors, and had conductors guide the passengers with flashlights) after an hour, at the most.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#52

Post by hedora »

tialaramex wrote: post #36
RDaneel0livaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frankly astonished it took people 3 hrs to smash the windows and get out. I'd have politely asked the operator to open it up and let us all out after the 1h mark and if they didn't I would smash the shit out of a window and crawl out. No chance I would sit in there for 3 hours.

But why smash windows? The doors aren't speed locked because the train isn't moving, so you can just use the emergency release on the doors and then pull them open. It's not trivial but neither is smashing a window, and the doors are closer to ground level (most adults should be able to sit on the door sill and lower themselves to ground level fairly comfortably)

They didn't smash the windows. Look at the photos, and not the text of the article.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#53

Post by Cyphase »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #42
Cyphase wrote: post #24

Off topic, but the phrasing of the headline[0] caught my attention. Shouldn't it be, "Thousands stranded in dark for hours as London trains see power cut"? Is this not as clear cut as I'm thinking? Maybe it's a British English thing? [0] In case it changes for any reason, it's currently, "London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours".

It seems to muddle cause and effect. IMO it should read "Thousands stranded in dark for hours after London trains lose power."

I agree actually; that's even better. I was only referring to ordering around the "as".

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#54

Post by blibble »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #14
midasuni wrote: post #5

“New” That rail line, and Ladbroke Grove in particular, dates back nearly 200 years.

That's referring to the Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022: > "Trains stopped running between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport in the rush hour after damage to overhead cables, shutting down the £19billion Elizabeth Line and causing major disruption to National Rail and Heathrow Express services." This point notwithstanding, it's not clear whether the 'cold and angry' passengers were those on the Elizabeth li…

you can see in the picture it's a 345

you can also see it's at the throat leading out of paddington, i.e. the Great Western main line

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#55

Post by Cyphase »

jareklupinski wrote: post #46
Cyphase wrote: post #24

Off topic, but the phrasing of the headline[0] caught my attention. Shouldn't it be, "Thousands stranded in dark for hours as London trains see power cut"? Is this not as clear cut as I'm thinking? Maybe it's a British English thing? [0] In case it changes for any reason, it's currently, "London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours".

rn the Headline for me shows "Passengers cold and angry after four-hour powercut on new £19,000,000,000 rail line" please stay clear; the basilisk is feeding

That's the headline visible on the page. The is what we're discussing here.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#56

Post by samus »

YawningAngel wrote: post #3
michaelt wrote: post #2

> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours. It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out". Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, a…

I was in a similar situation on a London train (different line) this month. The problem is that the operators genuinely do not know how long things are going to take. I agree that the TTR is obviously unacceptable, but the whole service is run on a shoestring budget and is constantly cancelled or late, so there isn't really the capital available to do better.

That doesn't justify letting passengers sit in the dark for 3 hours. Most riders probably expect to last their trip half an hour, with the usual variance already factored in.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#57

Post by Symbiote »

hedora wrote: post #51
michaelt wrote: post #2

> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours. It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out". Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, a…

Based on the photos, "smash their way out" appears to mean "open the door with the clearly marked manual override level", and "stranded" appears to mean "had to cross a couple tracks, and walk to the nearest gap in the fence". The text of the article suggests they had to use the emergency windows / break stuff, and that they were stuck in a tunnel without a pedestrian evacuation route (which would be illegal even her…

Britain obviously wouldn't build a new tunnel without an evacuation route, but the existing tunnels can be 100 or more years old and lack them.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#58

Post by pdonis »

danpalmer wrote: post #6
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Whether that is telling passengers that busses will be there in two hours or whatever, you work it out. If something like this happens in a winter storm, it can become deadly.

> When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. Most of the time it's just that someone has dropped their phone on the track and trains have been asked to stop so that it can be retrieved. Worst case scenario management is expensive and dangerous (e.g. walking on tracks) because the net risk or net cost is…

> Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though.

While this is true, this would seem to be one of those cases where the people in charge should have known it was a worst case scenario fairly early on. In which case they should have activated the worst case scenario fallback plan much earlier.

In other words, it's not a matter of treating every scenario as worst case, but of quickly spotting the ones that are so fallback plans can be activated much sooner to avoid stranding people for hours.

> It's hard to know when you're in one.

The passengers and the driver of that train obviously didn't know--but somebody knew fairly early on that this wasn't going to be a quick fix, and that somebody should be responsible for communicating that knowledge to all the affected trains and telling their drivers to evacuate because this isn't going to be fixed any time soon. The big question I would be asking is why that wasn't done and why it isn't standard operating procedure in cases like this.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#59

Post by ziddoap »

drexlspivey wrote: post #45
uxp8u61q wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

TFL is actually profitable, you could google that in less time that it would take to write this comment, these wild hypotheticals are just noise

uxp8u61q's point is not a wild hypothetical, and is a valid point regardless of the profit status of TFL.

- If your budget is $10 but it costs $100, that's shoestring.

- If your budget is $10 but it costs $1, that's not shoestring.

You need to know both values; shoestring is relative.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#60

Post by martinald »

vinay427 wrote: post #16
rsynnott wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London trains are mostly third rail powered rather than overhead line, right? You really don't want people walking on one of those. Like, you don't want people walking on any train line, but particularly not one with a third rail.

These are mainline trains between Paddington and Acton Main Line which use overhead power lines, not a third rail as with Underground services.

fourth*. Underground uses 2 rails for power delivery. A lot of the rest of SE London/Kent uses 3rd rail.
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