On Jul 12, 9:47?pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
Unfortunately someone saw fit to throw themselves under a train at
Harrow and Wealdstone at the height of the evening peak this evening
(around 1720 I believe). This, as you might guess, caused quite a lot
of chaos at Euston, and resulted in me getting back about 2 hours late
following us getting stuck behind a failed VT at Watford to add insult
to proverbial injury.

However, what I'd really like to comment on was the way in which this
was handled at Euston, which was downright poor in a number of
significant and potentially dangerous ways.

A bit of background, when I arrived at Euston at about 1805 everything
was showing "delayed" and the concourse was absolutely packed. Rather
than stand around in it I headed to platform 11 to board what claimed
to be the 1724 Silverlink service, on which I sat listening to various
announcements (sensibly sending some IC passengers to alternative
services) for a while.

About an hour later, an announcement was made that platforms 8-11
would be closed and that people should return to the concourse. This
was said to be due to dangerous overcrowding, which was not evident
from where I was sitting.

A further 15 minutes later, a member of staff came through the train
chucking everyone off (fairly rudely), and the unit was locked OOU.
It didn't, however, go anywhere. After a conversation with another
member of staff I was told that the BTP had instructed them to
evacuate the platform area "for safety reasons" and they were just
following orders, though they themselves thought it was a bad idea. I
and about 100 others decided to ignore this, however, and remain on
platform 8, where no further hassle was given bar faces being pulled
by staff who seemed to have pretty much given up.

Now this is where I have an issue. The BTP had reportedly told the
Silverlink staff to evacuate more people to the concourse which was
already dangerously full of people. Surely this is completely the
wrong approach given the high risk of a bomb attack at present - it'd
be better to plan in advance which would be the first trains out
following a blockage (most sensible would probably be for those to be
the first ones that got stuck, and to pre-emptively cancel some later
ones) and get people on board until they were full, and only then to
block the concourse like that?

Surely the most important objective is to avoid huge crowds forming,
given that the trains were not themselves a dangerous location? (and
even had a bomb been involved it could have affected fewer people
distributed around trains with the protection of the trains
themselves?) Even if the trains were not to go out in that order,
they could then be evacuated one at a time, which would be far better?

Thoughts?

Neil

Again, if the Croxley Link was in place there would have been an
(albeit slower) alternative way to disperse passengers to Watford
Junction, in both directions!

Burkey