One person has lost their life, many others will be affected for
months or possibly even years by the experience...but hey, some people
might get home an hour or two late! Oh no! Thats infinately more
important than making sure that there arent bits of body lying about,
or checking the need to preserve a possible crime scene - just send
trains along the other lines! Oh, and there must be loads of staff to
tell abusive passengers who cant comprehend announcements or displays
that no, they dont know when or if their train will run.

Sorry for being flippant, but it happens. Poor people in poor areas
end their miserable lives. People going home from work get delayed.
Trains are cancelled. Staff get shouted at because they dont have
crystal balls. Its not going to change, so my advice is to go and find
a café, have a sit down and stop being so angry when compared to the
poor unfortunate who died and the poor unfortunate's who have to clear
up the result you have VERY little to complain about.

On Apr 5, 2:31*am, Chris Sanderson wrote:
One person has lost their life, many others will be affected for
months or possibly even years by the experience...but hey, some people
might get home an hour or two late! Oh no! Thats infinately more
important than making sure that there arent bits of body lying about,
or checking the need to preserve a possible crime scene - just send
trains along the other lines! Oh, and there must be loads of staff to
tell abusive passengers who cant comprehend announcements or displays
that no, they dont know when or if their train will run.

Sorry for being flippant, but it happens. Poor people in poor areas
end their miserable lives. People going home from work get delayed.
Trains are cancelled. Staff get shouted at because they dont have
crystal balls. Its not going to change, so my advice is to go and find
a café, have a sit down and stop being so angry when compared to the
poor unfortunate who died and the poor unfortunate's who have to clear
up the result you have VERY little to complain about.

Maybe so, but its us what have to suffer the delays and the railways
should have a contingecy for when events like this happen but the
truth is theyre just not interested in going out of there way if its
going to cost them to bring in buses/coaches/taxis when they can just
put there hands up and say its network rails fault.

On Apr 5, 2:31*am, Chris Sanderson wrote:
One person has lost their life, many others will be affected for
months or possibly even years by the experience...but hey, some people
might get home an hour or two late! Oh no! Thats infinately more
important than making sure that there arent bits of body lying about,
or checking the need to preserve a possible crime scene - just send
trains along the other lines! Oh, and there must be loads of staff to
tell abusive passengers who cant comprehend announcements or displays
that no, they dont know when or if their train will run.

Sorry for being flippant, but it happens. Poor people in poor areas
end their miserable lives. People going home from work get delayed.
Trains are cancelled. Staff get shouted at because they dont have
crystal balls. Its not going to change, so my advice is to go and find
a café, have a sit down and stop being so angry when compared to the
poor unfortunate who died and the poor unfortunate's who have to clear
up the result you have VERY little to complain about.

Yes it happens, alas - that's why there should be some contingency
planning.
Tim

On Apr 5, 3:31*am, Chris Sanderson wrote:
One person has lost their life, many others will be affected for
months or possibly even years by the experience...but hey, some people
might get home an hour or two late! Oh no! Thats infinately more
important than making sure that there arent bits of body lying about,
or checking the need to preserve a possible crime scene - just send
trains along the other lines! Oh, and there must be loads of staff to
tell abusive passengers who cant comprehend announcements or displays
that no, they dont know when or if their train will run.

Sorry for being flippant, but it happens. Poor people in poor areas
end their miserable lives. People going home from work get delayed.
Trains are cancelled. Staff get shouted at because they dont have
crystal balls. Its not going to change, so my advice is to go and find
a café, have a sit down and stop being so angry when compared to the
poor unfortunate who died and the poor unfortunate's who have to clear
up the result you have VERY little to complain about.

Perhaps we should have declared a day of national mourning and stopped
all work from happening anywhere.

If everything is in chaos and nothing running at 21.00, for farther
flung destinations (Paddington is, after all, an intercity station),
we are starting to get into "last train" times. If you're a couple of
hundred miles from home and your only route home is cancelled, it's a
little more serious than "go to a cafe and come back later", because
"later" could well be tomorrow morning. Would you be happy to be
dumped in a railway station 200 miles from home overnight with nowhere
to stay under such circumstances?

It's not just a question of "damn the crime scene, get the trains
running", there are other railway lines and other ways of getting
there (eg via Waterloo, coaches).

Robin

On Apr 5, 9:31*am, bob wrote:

It's not just a question of "damn the crime scene, get the trains
running", there are other railway lines and other ways of getting
there (eg via Waterloo, coaches).

And a passenger is ill-advised to act outside staff advice at that
time of night, as if they're then stranded you can be sure "it's your
own fault" will be the answer. So there needed to be staff to decide
what to do and to confirm it to passengers.

Neil

Neil Williams wrote:

On Apr 5, 9:31*am, bob wrote:

It's not just a question of "damn the crime scene, get the trains
running", there are other railway lines and other ways of getting
there (eg via Waterloo, coaches).

And a passenger is ill-advised to act outside staff advice at that
time of night, as if they're then stranded you can be sure "it's your
own fault" will be the answer. So there needed to be staff to decide
what to do and to confirm it to passengers.

Until those investigating at the scene have actually said, "okay, we've
finished now" all rail staff can do is offer guesses, though.

Information about alternative routes home could also be overtaken by
events - e.g. people being directed to H&C line trains by fGW staff
could find them cancelled because of overcrowding.

It's very hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer in these
circumstances, apart from "keep calm and carry on".

--
..sig down for maintenance

On Apr 5, 11:12*am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Until those investigating at the scene have actually said, "okay, we've
finished now" all rail staff can do is offer guesses, though.

What they can do is offer the ability to say "we were told to do
that". Which can be very useful when someone gets stuck further down
the line.

They can also reassure people that they aren't being ignored. The LUL
requirement for a "we are being held at a red signal" announcement
after N minutes (N=2?) is a good example. It does not provide useful
information, but it does provide reassurance that someone gives a
monkeys about the passengers and they are not just an operational
inconvenience.

It's very hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer in these
circumstances, apart from "keep calm and carry on".

And reassurance. The human factor is very important, but often
neglected.

Oddly, said human factor can sometimes be provided via technology. I
find LM's Twitter feed very good for this.

Neil

Neil Williams wrote:

On Apr 5, 11:12*am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Until those investigating at the scene have actually said, "okay, we've
finished now" all rail staff can do is offer guesses, though.

What they can do is offer the ability to say "we were told to do
that". Which can be very useful when someone gets stuck further down
the line.

They can also reassure people that they aren't being ignored. The LUL
requirement for a "we are being held at a red signal" announcement
after N minutes (N=2?) is a good example. It does not provide useful
information, but it does provide reassurance that someone gives a
monkeys about the passengers and they are not just an operational
inconvenience.

Well, I'd certainly agree that an announcement every so often saying
"Unfortunately we do not have any firm information about when trains
will be able to leave" would convey the idea that somebody was
interested in the passengers, but I can't see what else could be said
when there is no information to convey. Some of the more strident
comments in this thread seem to assume that managers on the scene would
somehow be able to convey information that was not otherwise being
conveyed.

It's very hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer in these
circumstances, apart from "keep calm and carry on".

And reassurance. The human factor is very important, but often
neglected.

That may be a by-product of compensation culture. In the past, I reckon
there was much more of a "we're all in this together" attitude, whereas
nowadays, there's a prevalent, "whose fault is this and how much can I
screw them for?"

Oddly, said human factor can sometimes be provided via technology. I
find LM's Twitter feed very good for this.

So I gather from your previous postings. The only time I've bothered
with Twitter (not railway related) I haven't found anything sufficiently
interesting to persevere with it.

--
..sig down for maintenance

On Apr 5, 11:44*am, Chris Tolley (ukonline
really) wrote:

Well, I'd certainly agree that an announcement every so often saying
"Unfortunately we do not have any firm information about when trains
will be able to leave" would convey the idea that somebody was
interested in the passengers, but I can't see what else could be said
when there is no information to convey.

That's roughly the same as the Tube one. It might also be worth
suggesting alternatives that are known to exist as others have posted
and cross-ticket acceptance arranged where sensible. But such an
announcement does have value - or LU clearly believe so!

And reassurance. *The human factor is very important, but often
neglected.

That may be a by-product of compensation culture. In the past, I reckon
there was much more of a "we're all in this together" attitude, whereas
nowadays, there's a prevalent, "whose fault is this and how much can I
screw them for?"

I disagree. It may well be that the railway used to leave people
stranded or ignore them through its own self importance. That doesn't
mean to say they should now. Airlines are atrocious at this, I find,
the railway is rather better. Is that not a good thing?

FWIW, I do not claim Delay Repay money from the railway in an event
causing delay that is beyond its control, such as the one this thread
is discussing; that would seem unreasonable to me. But it does seem
reasonable to me that regardless of the cause of the delay the railway
should assist the passengers and provide them information, even if
that information is "we haven't forgotten you, but by the way there is
no information". It might similarly mean that the railway isn't in a
position to pay for hotel accommodation, but will assist you in
finding it, for instance, or might even pay for it out of goodwill, or
park a train in the platform to let people kip on there (as I believe
Eurostar have done once or twice). It's not about who is strictly
liable, it's about a company's moral responsibility to its customers.

So I gather from your previous postings. The only time I've bothered
with Twitter (not railway related) I haven't found anything sufficiently
interesting to persevere with it.

I haven't found a use for it other than transport information. But it
does pretty well at that if the TOC do their job. I have LM, VT and
Chiltern on there, and while they differ in how they work, all of them
are useful. Vastly more up to date and relevant than the Nexus Alpha
sites, or the now uselessly out of date NRE site.

Neil

In message , at 10:44:40 on
Tue, 5 Apr 2011, Chris Tolley writes

The only time I've bothered with Twitter (not railway related) I
haven't found anything sufficiently interesting to persevere with it.

Are you a potential user of Pikfu. It seems they tweeted last night
about the launch of the ?beta service.
--
Roland Perry