Following the Eurostar train failures today, the BBC was interviewing (if you can call haranguing someone while they try to answer your questions interviewing) Richard Brown, CEO of the company. The question being asked was why they did not get passengers off the trains more quickly. Richard Brown did explain why – in among the wittering and constant interruptions from the interviewer.
We did get them all safely out of the tunnel. Safety is our absolute priority as you would expect.
Quite. In any incident, safety is the initial priority.
When you have a failed train full of passengers, the best way of managing the situation is to keep those people on the train. The railway environment is hazardous and if you let people wander around as they please, they have a tendency to get themselves killed. Frankly, if the incident involves anything less than a fire on board, then keeping those people on the train is the safest option. The best option by far is to get the train moving rather than have to rescue them.
Passengers on two of the trains were taken out via service tunnels to car trains, while the passengers on the other three trains remained on board.
This seems to me to be a sensible and pragmatic method of getting people out as efficiently as possible given that the failed trains weren’t going anywhere fast. When dealing with incidents on the railway, utilising other trains is one option for getting passengers out of the situation.
While I understand the frustrations people experienced, as I’ve been on failed trains myself often enough, some of the hyperbole is bordering on the hysterical.
“It was terrible. We were treated like animals”
No, you were not. You were evacuated using a train not normally used for passenger transport in order to get you out as quickly as possible. It was uncomfortable. It was unfortunate. You were not treated like animals. I also noted complaints about lack of food. What do these people expect? The train is not equipped for an overnight stop in the tunnel. This was an unprecedented situation.
Okay, so why it took so long to rescue the failed trains is an issue that will doubtless be explained at the inevitable inquiry, and clearly Eurostar have some serious introspection to do here. Why their trains are so badly affected by condensation being one of them. Also, could they have managed the incident more effectively (should they have involved the emergency services?) – probably, being the answer to that one. Hindsight always illustrates missed opportunities. However, until then, from the reporting that I have seen, the train crews did the best they could in the situation and followed protocol.
A little less hysteria and one-sided reporting would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Why their trains are so badly affected by condensation? Surely this is not the first time one of their trains has gone from freezing air into the tunnel…?
Quite – so why the problem now?
Perhaps there hasn’t been a lot of rail knocking copy to be had recently, and the railway averse hacks need to sate their appetite on whatever is around!
Slightly different topic: Have you seen that Trainline have decided to export all of their call centre to Bombay? But that Chiltern have broken ranks?
Yes, agreed, this was not the end of the world and one of the risks you have to accept when crossing the Channel (whether by boat, aeroplane or tunnel).
But you’re the expert, are there any clues why so many trains failed? I would assume it’s the cold, but that’s just me.
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I have to say that it’s a new one on me. I’ve travelled on Eurostar trains during similar weather conditions with no condensation problems. As I’ve only got the reports in the media to go on, I’m as baffled as everyone else – including, it seems, Eurostar.
News to me.
Well, it’s true that they certainly weren’t treated like animals. The RSPCA would be bringing a prosecution if animals had been left with no light, heat or food for 16 hours, and rightly so!
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Well, of course… 😉
More seriously, this was an unprecedented event. Trains are equipped for a two or three hour run, so the lack of food, water and such is hardly the fault of Eurostar – no one would seriously expect them to be provisioned for a whole night. Also, once the unit fails, sooner or later lights and air conditioning will fail – pretty quickly, in fact. This is not the fault of the train operator, it is due to the unit having no power and there’s nothing that can be done when the unit is dead.
The likelihood of such an event is so rare that it was not reasonably predictable. I’ve dealt with enough train failures in my time and a couple of hours is usually all it takes to get things moving and in those cases, the train crew will dish out what food and drinks they have and it isn’t much. I’ve never come across the kind of multiple failures experienced this weekend.
If I was to be really, really cynical (and cruel), my comment to the wife of the “treated like animals” man when she said that there was no oxygen in the tunnel, would be to ask how come she was still managing to waste it… Ahem.
Lol! 😉
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People get stuck on train, no casualties, some mild discomfort, and it’s headline news?
“Wrong type of snow” strikes again.
The chap who said that has never been able to live it down. Except that he didn’t say that at all. But, never mind, the media love a good quote even if it is fiction.
I think the problem is similar to one that I had 30 years ago with my Triumph GT6 when crossing the Alps. The bonnet filled with snow which later melted making water over the HT leads. Wrong kind of snow again! Duh!
Point taken about the veracity of the quotation. However, it could be said that any snow is the ‘wrong kind’ when transport technology is not built to cope with said adverse conditions.
Still a good line though.
Which is why it entered folk law. It’s interesting that Eurostar are getting all the flack. If your car broke down due to a design fault, would you blame yourself or the designer?
I think Eurostar are getting the flack because of their utterly woeful handling of the situation and the miscommunication.
I travel with c2c, and they occasionally have overhead power cable problems cause by high winds or the train pantograph bringing them down, or a car hitting a bridge that then needs to be safety checked before the trains can go under it.
I don’t blame them for that. What I do blame them for is the utter chaos that then descends, as the staff either make themselves scarce or run around like headless chickens, failing to use the tannoy to make platform announcements when they know the electronic system has been rendered useless.
This happens every time. They never seem to learn…
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I can forgive Eurostar given that this situation was so unprecedented. From the reporting, I gather that the real issues regarding poor management stem from one train.
As an erstwhile incident manager, it disappoints me that communication is still a problem. It is, after all, a key part of managing the incident.
My lenient attitude towards Eurostar would not survive a second occurrence, though.
Nice to see some balanced comment about this, I can’t throw any light on why these trains failed but I suspect that part of the problem is the sensitivity of modern hi-tech trains. I have had a full week of this myself ( I’m a signaller ) and the Southern 377 units are having a traumatic time , they just aren’t built to shrug off the sort of harsh but not extreme weather we’ve been having. Older stock was cruder but there was less to go wrong so it could mostly just bash on and ignore the snow. As for poor communication, the staff on the ground can be at fault but remember that they are working under pressure and often getting little or no help from further up the command chain, I’ve had a fair bit of experience of that this past week too.
Tell me about it. I used to be a signaller too and subsequently moved into signalling management. So, yes, I do understand all too well. I’ve also had dealings with the train operators both in my role in incident management and more recently in training some of their driver instructors for their NVQ awards.
One or two people trying to manage several hundred people in a difficult situation can be very stressful and they sometimes get it wrong. That said, they do receive training. Another question I would be asking at the inquiry is what Eurostar plan to do about beefing up that training.