1A79 Class 43 powercar on fire 28/02/25

[AMD]

ScotRail don't do train to train evacuation, not in the insurance. I've asked in the past, as I was trained by another operator to do this.

 

[aaronspence]

ScotRail don't do train to train evacuation, not in the insurance. I've asked in the past, as I was trained by another operator to do this.

Isnt there more likely hood of injury the way they did it here, by having to lower passengers off the HST, then up onto the 170? Vs if you aligned the doors and used a walkway

 

[Dfatcontroller]

Isnt there more likely hood of injury the way they did it here, by having to lower passengers off the HST, then up onto the 170? Vs if you aligned the doors and used a walkway

train-to-train isn't done. The walkway wouldn't have handrails.
It only takes one person to wobble whilst "walking the plank" and fall off.

Deemed that transfer via the ground is the safest approach by the people that decide these things.

Close the cocks, detach the errant powercarand away you go! Unless there’s damage around the couplers of course. I hate to be “one of those people”, but as always with these situations on today’s railway you wonder whether common sense solutions were put on the Too Difficult pile in favour of doing something more faffy! Anyway, all academic now!

Does SR have sufficient spare powercars (it’d be rather bizarre if they didn’t, given how many were available!) to be able to accept that this one is a scrapper, or no?

What was "faffy" in your book?

Train on fire. Driver stops once off the Bridge. Fire Extinguished. Passengers removed. Train moved into yard.

Where's the faff?

 

[43096]

train-to-train isn't done. The walkway wouldn't have handrails.
It only takes one person to wobble whilst "walking the plank" and fall off.

Deemed that transfer via the ground is the safest approach by the people that decide these things.

How does that work for mobility restricted passengers?

 

[Carntyne]

train-to-train isn't done. The walkway wouldn't have handrails.
It only takes one person to wobble whilst "walking the plank" and fall off.

Deemed that transfer via the ground is the safest approach by the people that decide these things.


What was "faffy" in your book?

Train on fire. Driver stops once off the Bridge. Fire Extinguished. Passengers removed. Train moved into yard.

Where's the faff?

Can you not buy the walkways with handrails? Commonly used by TOCs in England.

The faff surely the time involved, nearly 4 hours to get people off the train?

 

[najaB]

What was "faffy" in your book?

Train on fire. Driver stops once off the Bridge. Fire Extinguished. Passengers removed. Train moved into yard.

Where's the faff?

The only thing that could, with hindsight, have been done better was stopping so that at least some doors were aligned with the old platforms.

Then the passengers could have been walked down through the old station as I believe it is still an access point (or at least it was during the bridge works).

Though, having said that, there's no guarantee of the condition of said platforms.

 

[Deepgreen]

Can you not buy the walkways with handrails? Commonly used by TOCs in England.

The faff surely the time involved, nearly 4 hours to get people off the train?

Indeed - too obvious! I'm staggered that SR don't/can't use train-to-train evacuation. What about incidents in tunnels, on bridges, etc., where it is often the obvious solution? The modern disintegrated railway continues to amaze. This is from Amtrak in New York - a slimmer version would suffice for emergencies.

 

[aaronspence]

The faff surely the time involved, nearly 4 hours to get people off the train?

Agreed, especially being so close to a big station with resources, staff, spare trains, the tracks aren't electrified - 4 hours seems unreasonable but maybe thats just how it is with health and safety these days.

 

[marks87]

The only thing that could, with hindsight, have been done better was stopping so that at least some doors were aligned with the old platforms.

Then the passengers could have been walked down through the old station as I believe it is still an access point (or at least it was during the bridge works).

There is an access point down to Riverside Drive, but only to/from the former southbound platform.

Streetview link showing the access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4X6DR4H5anoZqPoaA

 

[Towers]

train-to-train isn't done. The walkway wouldn't have handrails.
It only takes one person to wobble whilst "walking the plank" and fall off.

Deemed that transfer via the ground is the safest approach by the people that decide these things.


What was "faffy" in your book?

Train on fire. Driver stops once off the Bridge. Fire Extinguished. Passengers removed. Train moved into yard.

Where's the faff?

As I suggested upthread, in an ideal world the crispy powercar would be detached and the passengers remain in-situ on the train, with the remaining powercar removing it to a suitable location for detraining.

That being said, of course there may have been various obstacles in place to that approach. Was it the leading or trailing power car?

 

[AndyPJG]

Was it the leading or trailing power car?

Posts #1 and #5.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Indeed - too obvious! I'm staggered that SR don't/can't use train-to-train evacuation. What about incidents in tunnels, on bridges, etc., where it is often the obvious solution? The modern disintegrated railway continues to amaze. This is from Amtrak in New York - a slimmer version would suffice for emergencies.
View attachment 175533

Last minute platform change?

Cross-train evacuation was trialled by Inter-City back in the early 90s. The trial was described by Peter Kirton in his book Proceed With Caution. I’m surprised its use never became widespread.

 

[Towers]

Posts #1 and #5.

Yes I could have looked for myself, in fairness!

 

[Gonzoiku]

(Is the signal box at the other end of the bridge still manned? The signaller there may have raised the alarm).

If the signaller had done so, I suspect s/he would have been following hallowed tradition from 28.12.1879.

GZ

 

[43096]

Indeed - too obvious! I'm staggered that SR don't/can't use train-to-train evacuation. What about incidents in tunnels, on bridges, etc., where it is often the obvious solution? The modern disintegrated railway continues to amaze. This is from Amtrak in New York - a slimmer version would suffice for emergencies.
View attachment 175533

That is not Amtrak. Looks more like Metro-North.

 

[Dfatcontroller]

As I suggested upthread, in an ideal world the crispy powercar would be detached and the passengers remain in-situ on the train, with the remaining powercar removing it to a suitable location for detraining.

That being said, of course there may have been various obstacles in place to that approach. Was it the leading or trailing power car?

Then an unbraked crispy powercar would be left in situ. Necessitating further recovery and the line closed even longer.
Your ideal world sounds like more faff than letting those who dealt with the issue deal with the issue!

 

[MadMac]

Could train-to-train be done with an HST having outward opening doors?

 

[skyhigh]

Could train-to-train be done with an HST having outward opening doors?

Does a Scotrail HST have outward opening passenger doors......?

 

[Dfatcontroller]

Could train-to-train be done with an HST having outward opening doors?

Yes.

Does a Scotrail HST have outward opening passenger doors......?

No.

 

[MadMac]

Yes.



No.

Ah. Been a long time since I was on one.

 

[Dfatcontroller]

The only thing that could, with hindsight, have been done better was stopping so that at least some doors were aligned with the old platforms.

Then the passengers could have been walked down through the old station as I believe it is still an access point (or at least it was during the bridge works).

Though, having said that, there's no guarantee of the condition of said platforms.

Condition of walkway was assessed and was the third best option for the passengers. The evac to another train was option 2.

Can you not buy the walkways with handrails? Commonly used by TOCs in England.

The faff surely the time involved, nearly 4 hours to get people off the train?

Three hours into the problem was when evacuation became a reality.
0-60mins: fire brigade dealing with the fire.
61-120mins: Driver to isolate brakes and get on the move but ran into issues.
121-180mins: Fitter on site to assist and ran into further difficulties.
181-240mins: assist leaves Dundee and returns within this hour into Dundee station.

It was always "One more thing and the train can move" which always ran into further problems and wasn't as easy as envisaged. Therefore evac ordered.
When dealing with the problems - time passes by incredibly quickly!

 

[najaB]

Condition of walkway was assessed and was the third best option for the passengers. The evac to another train was option 2

Thanks for the info!

 

[scotraildriver]

Appears to have been a dragging brake which caused the fire, the parking brake then became jammed on preventing movement. Suspect damage will be minimal as is usually the case with brake fires.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Could train-to-train be done with an HST having outward opening doors?

It would be achievable through the power car sliding doors.

 

[johnr57]

There may well be a never ending line of experts lurking around - but I am sure most of can recognise informed knowledge and experience when we see it, and appreciate those contributions

 

[aaronspence]

Condition of walkway was assessed and was the third best option for the passengers. The evac to another train was option 2.



Three hours into the problem was when evacuation became a reality.
0-60mins: fire brigade dealing with the fire.
61-120mins: Driver to isolate brakes and get on the move but ran into issues.
121-180mins: Fitter on site to assist and ran into further difficulties.
181-240mins: assist leaves Dundee and returns within this hour into Dundee station.

It was always "One more thing and the train can move" which always ran into further problems and wasn't as easy as envisaged. Therefore evac ordered.
When dealing with the problems - time passes by incredibly quickly!

Appreciate hearing the full story, sometimes from the outside it feels like nothing is happening hence our comments!

 

[Dfatcontroller]

Appreciate hearing the full story, sometimes from the outside it feels like nothing is happening hence our comments!

The proverbial duck. Appears calm and sedate from the topside. Paddling furious underwater!
That is the Control, all day, every day.

 

[notverydeep]

Indeed - too obvious! I'm staggered that SR don't/can't use train-to-train evacuation. What about incidents in tunnels, on bridges, etc., where it is often the obvious solution? The modern disintegrated railway continues to amaze. This is from Amtrak in New York - a slimmer version would suffice for emergencies.
View attachment 175533

How on earth did they end up using an evacuation bridge for passengers to board a train…?

London Underground use similar bridges to evacuate stalled lifts in shafts with two lift cars, though these are much shorter as the cars are very close together normally.

 

[Annetts key]

The proverbial duck. Appears calm and sedate from the topside. Paddling furious underwater!
That is the Control, all day, every day.

This is generic and not about Scotland:
This is going a bit off topic, but sometimes “Control” looses the plot and makes rash or strange decisions. But the worst thing is sometimes they take far too long to make a decision.
It’s hard to say if overall they get it right because if things are going well, it’s just another day and isn’t noticed.
I was especially impressed one day. My team were still on route to a train stopping failure but the railway was informing passengers and the media that the problem would be rectified within 30 minutes. Given that the road journey to get to the site of the equipment would take over 30 minutes, we found that rather amusing... Now, I don’t know if that was Network Rail control or just someone in the TOC but it’s an example of how stupid the railway can be.

 

[driverd]

Condition of walkway was assessed and was the third best option for the passengers. The evac to another train was option 2.

Three hours into the problem was when evacuation became a reality.
0-60mins: fire brigade dealing with the fire.
61-120mins: Driver to isolate brakes and get on the move but ran into issues.
121-180mins: Fitter on site to assist and ran into further difficulties.
181-240mins: assist leaves Dundee and returns within this hour into Dundee station.

Thanks for the run down - it's always interesting to hear the full story and see the decision making in action.

Appears to have been a dragging brake which caused the fire, the parking brake then became jammed on preventing movement. Suspect damage will be minimal as is usually the case with brake fires.

If either party can divulge such information, did the fire have anything to do with the battery boxes? Or was it just the airflow taking flames into the gap between them and the body work (asking as it appears there are flames in that area on the picture).