West Midlands Trains duty of care: LNR passengers abandoned on platform

[Bow Fell]

My point is more that at the end of the day, especially when there's going to be significantly reduced loadings (especially on last trains with pretty much all nightlife closed) - slavishly "recovering the service" seems to suggest a railway that runs for it's own benefit and sees passengers as a nuisance. When it's that late in the day, I would have thought the approach would be along the lines of "make sure no staff go out of hours, the rolling stock gets to where it's supposed to go, and we'll try again tomorrow". Obviously that's a gross oversimplification and no doubt staff and rolling stock will have been what was driving decision making, especially in the context of the extended closure and handing it over for works to start on time, etc, but skipping stops to minimise delay into Euston, to try and get the last NB services out on time (for example - though again in the context of a weekend closure that's obviously more important) doesn't sit well.

It’s called looking at the bigger picture though, and whilst it’s not ideal sometimes, it plays a massive part.

Making sure traincrew are in the right place on the last services, an important one, this could impact tomorrow’s service depending on the amount of delay with 12 hour rest periods.

Making sure units are in the right place to end at the depot for exam? Even more important. Have I made decisions because of units, over passengers? Yes, unfortunately, I have.

Put it this way, if a unit ends up out of course and ends up “stopped” the next day, over the cancellation of a last service, guess which one the bosses above are going to come down on me like a ton of bricks over? I don’t agree that should be the case, but that’s where we are.

If you have a unit that runs out of exam miles or is stopped close of play, and you don’t get it to the depot/stabling location, and it ends up out of course, then you just move even more cancellations to the next day. Not ideal for anyone.

 

[43066]

No, what I think is that the railway should accept that it was a mistake, and investigate their processes and update them so it is less likely to happen again.

I think that is fully accepted. Generally things *do* work a lot better, but something clearly went wrong on this occasion. That’s unfortunate but a couple of hours on a platform really isn’t the end of the world - despite what some on here are making it out to be.

It's clearly not dangerous, but it absolutely is appalling customer service to detrain people without a plan for what to do with them and communicating that to them.

Again, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. Communication (or lack thereof) is generally where things go wrong on the railway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Again, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. Communication (or lack thereof) is generally where things go wrong on the railway.

Agreed. Interestingly this is one that air travel used to be even worse at (the pointless excuse of "the late arrival of the inbound aircraft", for instance) but easyJet have become very, very good at, with Control updates on flights in a lot of detail on their app. The railway really needs to catch up.

 

[ashkeba]

I thought I'd stumbled across the antirailforums.co.uk site here. Don't let me interrupt.

You may like to read some posts in https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/advice-only-for-greater-anglia-delay-repay-fraud.213418/ before dismissing the idea of being accused of fraud because you claimed delay repay rather than other compensation when you "abandoned" a journey by using bus, taxi or lyft from a station where you were detrained during disrupted service. If GA get away with that, it seems probable other TOCs may try to recover DR claims in a similar way.

 

[A0wen]

I'm a customer who knows what he likes to feel respected by a business. An honest and transparent business is one that respects its customers. A business that obfuscates and hides things is a business that does not respect its customers.

A business that totally disregards that is a business deserving to fail. The railway only manages to get away with it because it receives subsidy.

Right - so you have no experience beyond being a customer, correct ? Try a bit harder, what is your "day job" that equips you to pontificate on this (and other threads) with such experience ?

So go on then, give an example of a major company giving such operational or commercial information out in response to a complaint (I'll wait).

 

[noddingdonkey]

I think all the OP is asking for is an assurance that the matter has been taken seriously and that measures have been taken to prevent a recurrence. I don't think they are expecting much more detail than that.

As has been said most decent organisations want to give as much information after they cock something up on this kind of scale because it might help to prevent that customer voting with their feet and going to a competitor next time.

And because, frankly, if you've been dumped on a freezing cold platform for hours an explanation is the least you are entitled to. Morally if not legally.

 

[43066]

Agreed. Interestingly this is one that air travel used to be even worse at (the pointless excuse of "the late arrival of the inbound aircraft", for instance) but easyJet have become very, very good at, with Control updates on flights in a lot of detail on their app. The railway really needs to catch up.

This is why I wholeheartedly believe in telling it like it is up to and including the statement “a person has been struck by a train”. People don’t like being BSd and are far more understanding when they know the score.

 

[Bevan Price]

Apologists who think that "operational decisions" are more important than providing passengers with an acceptable service are what helps to give railway companies a bad name. The railways do not exist to suit what is easiest for managements - they exist to provide a service to the public.

Yes, accidents and fatalities do occur occasionally, and people accept the inevitable delays. What they do not accept is gross incompetence disguised as flimsy excuses such as management-speak.

Terminating a train at somewhere like Hemel Hempstead can only be described as doing what is easiest for the railway company. Terminating at Watford would mean more problems for the railway company, but would have been a much better solution for the people who matter -- the passengers dumped in (to them) an unfamiliar location, (mis)led to expect another train within 30 minutes or so, and with no information about possible alternative services.

 

[robbeech]

I’m not sure how the “views” are calculated on this forum. But the thread has nearly 13,000 views. Lots of those views will be people who’s view of the railway and its staff will be someone diminished because of the attitude of a few staff on threads like this. This attitude has a much larger negative effect than the incident itself.

 

[Horizon22]

As I mentioned it's poor incident management - with a load of issues to deal with, and probably tired late in the day, Control will have simply forgotten about them. Not wilful, just they will have got lost in the massive pile of (probably electronic) paperwork about the mess that the railway has ended up in.

Anyone who has watched the documentary about FGW/GWR at Paddington will see that this is all still done very manually, and this is the problem.

This is indeed the problem. With the numerous other things, the controller on duty likely took their eye off the ball - and I still think its reasonable that this was around shift handover with nights which is normally around 2100 in a TOC Control - and it wasn't passed on. It looks like that is what happened and under normal circumstances a bus would have been organised, or a special stop order (SSO), or taxis, or 2Y18 would have stopped instead of running through.

It looks like it was a catalogue of unfortunate errors that led to this, rather than anything more malicious. Control room managers clearly didn't identify this risk either. As someone who's been in similar scenarios, its important to have timeouts so you are able to ask questions such as "hang on what happened to the passengers for that service we terminated at HML earlier?" and "How long has X gone without a service?". Good incident management takes these aspects into account, but I gather they were sorely lacking. I've been in scenarios where it just takes one person to ask the question - as otherwise you are just constantly firefighting - to reevaluate the situation. That is what should have been happening.

I wouldn't take it as endemic control failure at LWMR - although they may well be poorly equipped to deal with these situations I couldn't say - and they often have serious incident reviews were lessons will be learnt. As per normal in service disruption and one thing I always challenge is that the most important aspect is COMMUNICATION (at all levels, between all people - staff or passengers). The worse it is, the more likely you get issues like happened here.

 

[allotments]

yes

what I

My point is more that at the end of the day, especially when there's going to be significantly reduced loadings (especially on last trains with pretty much all nightlife closed) - slavishly "recovering the service" seems to suggest a railway that runs for it's own benefit and sees passengers as a nuisance. When it's that late in the day, I would have thought the approach would be along the lines of "make sure no staff go out of hours, the rolling stock gets to where it's supposed to go, and we'll try again tomorrow". Obviously that's a gross oversimplification and no doubt staff and rolling stock will have been what was driving decision making, especially in the context of the extended closure and handing it over for works to start on time, etc, but skipping stops to minimise delay into Euston, to try and get the last NB services out on time (for example - though again in the context of a weekend closure that's obviously more important) doesn't sit well.

Yes

What I experienced on Friday night took me from implicitly trusting the railway to disbelief.

I witnessed the non-appearance of multiple promised trains within half an hour of being set down, the skip stopping 23:49, a skip stopping 00:14 which was to make a special stop, poor communication throughout at Hemel Hempstead, the train service recovering for everyone else (trains flying thru station) and I sensed trains running past being positioned for the next day. It's only when deep in this mire at midnight when there's no doubt in your mind that something so bad can actually be true.

On arrival at Euston at 01:07 I looked for help with onward travel home but was told by a Network Rail lady there was nobody available from LNWR.

I'm at Euston now. Have discussed with a manager at platform level. He said there was a member of LNWR staff on duty all night who could arrange taxis home and they could have been called.

My view is that LNWR should have met the train and proactively supported delayed passengers.

Clearly yet another problem to resolve there.

 

[Horizon22]

Agreed. Interestingly this is one that air travel used to be even worse at (the pointless excuse of "the late arrival of the inbound aircraft", for instance) but easyJet have become very, very good at, with Control updates on flights in a lot of detail on their app. The railway really needs to catch up.

I too have never liked that. "This train is late because of a delay to a train in front of this one" is nonsese. Just use the delay reason for that original train as that is the root cause. But I could talk all day about a lack of broader awareness in Control teams!

yes

what I

Yes

What I experienced on Friday night took me from implicitly trusting the railway to disbelief.

I witnessed the non-appearance of multiple promised trains within half an hour of being set down, the skip stopping 23:49, a skip stopping 00:14 which was to make a special stop, poor communication throughout at Hemel Hempstead, the train service recovering for everyone else (trains flying thru station) and I sensed trains running past being positioned for the next day. It's only when deep in this mire at midnight when there's no doubt in your mind that something so bad can actually be true.

On arrival at Euston at 01:07 I looked for help with onward travel home but was told by a Network Rail lady there was nobody available from LNWR.

I'm at Euston now. Have discussed with a manager at platform level. He said there was a member of LNWR staff on duty all night who could arrange taxis home and they could have been called.

My view is that LNWR should have met the train and proactively supported delayed passengers.

Clearly yet another problem to resolve there.

I also query where the guard originally got the information about onward trains. He was evidently given information that was a) likely to happen but not confirmed (wishful thinking) or b) made it up (unlikely), c) incorrect information from Control. I also know Euston has a specific operational role to deal with service disruption that I think works 24/7 (might not work nights). But I wouldn't be suprprised if they never knew or realised a chunk of people were waiting at Hemel. Once the incident happened, the likelihood that it will be picked up rapidly diminishes as other priorities come to the fore. If it wasn't picked up and identified as a quantified action to move people on from Hemel within 90 minutes, the opportunity is missed.

I will take an educated guess that 2Y18 was meant to call but again communication to the crew was not relayed as it should have - looked like it ran fast all the way from Northampton.

 

[geoffk]

If that is what you want, I would suggest that you contact DfT then. You should involve your local MP and Assembly Members to bother the relevant minister on the matter - ideally, make sure that at least one of the people you involve is a Conservative.

Also contact Transport Focus, formerly Passenger Focus, Rail Passenger's Council, RUCC, TUCC....

 

[Horizon22]

Apologists who think that "operational decisions" are more important than providing passengers with an acceptable service are what helps to give railway companies a bad name. The railways do not exist to suit what is easiest for managements - they exist to provide a service to the public.

Yes, accidents and fatalities do occur occasionally, and people accept the inevitable delays. What they do not accept is gross incompetence disguised as flimsy excuses such as management-speak.

Terminating a train at somewhere like Hemel Hempstead can only be described as doing what is easiest for the railway company. Terminating at Watford would mean more problems for the railway company, but would have been a much better solution for the people who matter -- the passengers dumped in (to them) an unfamiliar location, (mis)led to expect another train within 30 minutes or so, and with no information about possible alternative services.

The two can match but there are many aspects that need to be taken into account when a train terminates. The operational side (terminating a train, sorting crew) and the information side (updating CIS screens, delay reasons, calling patterns) are different roles - albeit connected. Sometimes one has a lag between the other and its normally the information side following the operational. Sometimes it comes down to competenece that the person on the desk that shift just isn't as good as someone else. Sometimes you cannot provide an "acceptable service" in big incidents like fatalities, dewirements or severe weather (e.g. signifcant flooding) despite best intentions.

There are other things to consider though - how easy it is to send the train back north? What else has terminated at Watford Junction? What can the signaller achieve? What is the train's next working at Euston? What are the crew implications? What are the stock implications? How busy was the train terminated? Is there another service for passenger travelling southbound right behind this one? Has alternative transport been arranged? How long are we expecting the incident to last? Just some of the questions that will need to be raised.

Fundamentally the individual issue of terminating the train at Hemel is not a major problem. It is however the catalogue of following missed actions that led to this thread with hundreds of posts and thousands of views. Otherwise this wouldn't have even been worthy of a thread if the next train called or a bus turned up within reasonable time to take people to say, Watford. As someone who knows how Control works, there were clearly numerous failings that led to this issue.

 

[riceuten]

Not sure the understanding of "duty if care" is right here.

The TOC didn't "abandon" passengers in a remote area with no onward travel options - Hemel's a main station, there were facilities and taxis available for example. If they'd been dropped at somewhere like Berney Arms or Dovey Junction, that would be different.

The train provided was safe, the station was safe.

I don't believe a "duty of care" covers getting you to your final destination.

So whilst the customer service or information provided may have been poor, that's not the same as a breach of duty of care.

Have you ever been to Hemel ?

There are zero facilities at Hemel. The station is (publicly) unstaffed after 6pm. Taxis are few and far between, particularly in the evening. There's nowhere to get food or drink at the station and you're a good 25 to 30 minutes walk from the centre of town (almost all of which is closed in the evening anyway). There's little in the way of shelter on the platforms. If I recall correctly, WMT don't answer the phone out of office hours and their social media team appear not to work evenings either.

 

[robbeech]

On arrival at Euston at 01:07 I looked for help with onward travel home but was told by a Network Rail lady there was nobody available from LNWR.

I'm at Euston now. Have discussed with a manager at platform level. He said there was a member of LNWR staff on duty all night who could arrange taxis home and they could have been called.

Death, taxes and no railway staff to be seen in times of disruption only to be told they were there.
It’s guaranteed, every time.

 

[zwk500]

Fundamentally the individual issue of terminating the train at Hemel is not a major problem. It is however the catalogue of following missed actions that led to this thread with hundreds of posts and thousands of views. Otherwise this wouldn't have even been worthy of a thread if the next train called or a bus turned up within reasonable time to take people to say, Watford. As someone who knows how Control works, there were clearly numerous failings that led to this issue.

Oh, for a like button.

 

[riceuten]

Exactly right, because if the overall service is not recovered quickly then that will affect far more people.

Yes, I am sure stopping a single train in the intervening 2 and a half hours would have MASSIVELY impacted recovery.

 

[Horizon22]

Death, taxes and no railway staff to be seen in times of disruption only to be told they were there.
It’s guaranteed, every time.

To be fair, the staff member responsible for doing those things mentioned is probably likely to be an office-based role. I don't know how Euston staff work otherwise though, aren't their LNWR platform staff 24/7?

 

[Wolfie]

Oh, for a like button.

Agreed

The two can match but there are many aspects that need to be taken into account when a train terminates. The operational side (terminating a train, sorting crew) and the information side (updating CIS screens, delay reasons, calling patterns) are different roles - albeit connected. Sometimes one has a lag between the other and its normally the information side following the operational. Sometimes it comes down to competenece that the person on the desk that shift just isn't as good as someone else. Sometimes you cannot provide an "acceptable service" in big incidents like fatalities, dewirements or severe weather (e.g. signifcant flooding) despite best intentions.

There are other things to consider though - how easy it is to send the train back north? What else has terminated at Watford Junction? What can the signaller achieve? What is the train's next working at Euston? What are the crew implications? What are the stock implications? How busy was the train terminated? Is there another service for passenger travelling southbound right behind this one? Has alternative transport been arranged? How long are we expecting the incident to last? Just some of the questions that will need to be raised.

Fundamentally the individual issue of terminating the train at Hemel is not a major problem. It is however the catalogue of following missed actions that led to this thread with hundreds of posts and thousands of views. Otherwise this wouldn't have even been worthy of a thread if the next train called or a bus turned up within reasonable time to take people to say, Watford. As someone who knows how Control works, there were clearly numerous failings that led to this issue.

A useful explanation which admits that things went wrong rather than, as some have, seeking to justify the unacceptable.

 

[zwk500]

Yes, I am sure stopping a single train in the intervening 2 and a half hours would have MASSIVELY impacted recovery.

That wasn't what the post you replied to was saying. Terminating the original train was a potentially justifiable decision - it's the ball full of consequences of that decision being well and truly dropped that's the issue.

 

[43066]

You may like to read some posts in https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/advice-only-for-greater-anglia-delay-repay-fraud.213418/ before dismissing the idea of being accused of fraud because you claimed delay repay rather than other compensation when you "abandoned" a journey by using bus, taxi or lyft from a station where you were detrained during disrupted service. If GA get away with that, it seems probable other TOCs may try to recover DR claims in a similar way.

Ah yes, a highly amusing read. A thread where people have openly admitting to defrauding the railway and started squirming when the police came a-knocking. Another category of passenger we could do without!

What is the relevance of that to the OP’s situation, please?

I too have never liked that. "This train is late because of a delay to a train in front of this one" is nonsese. Just use the delay reason for that original train as that is the root cause.

Fully agree.

I will take an educated guess that 2Y18 was meant to call but again communication to the crew was not relayed as it should have - looked like it ran fast all the way from Northampton.

And we all know what that means. Likely the special stop order was not passed down the chain (as a driver, if you stop out of course it’s a potential no tea and biscuits). I’ve had to ask for them to be rewritten with the correct head code before, and indeed been given one which was intended for another train.

 

[riceuten]

In this case, passengers normally call taxis after half an hour to an hour if the ToC hasn't done so (and they only need to do that when the last train has already been and gone).

And then get told, as indeed was I one evening a couple of years ago, that because I couldn't find a non-existent staff member at the station to authorise the taxi, I couldn't have my £50 taxi fare back. And yes, the TOC concerned even admitted that no more trains operated that evening.

That wasn't what the post you replied to was saying. Terminating the original train was a potentially justifiable decision - it's the ball full of consequences of that decision being well and truly dropped that's the issue.

"the overall service is not recovered quickly then that will affect far more people" certainly implies that

 

[robbeech]

To be fair, the staff member responsible for doing those things mentioned is probably likely to be an office-based role. I don't know how Euston staff work otherwise though, aren't their LNWR platform staff 24/7?

I’m not sure of their whereabouts and obviously my comment here (unlike others of mine in this thread) is in jest, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that on SO many occasions during disruption we see constant complaints that there are no staff to be seen at stations. Nobody to talk to, nobody in offices, nobody on platforms, nobody answering phone lines and help points, unrelated staff not being able to help etc.

 

[Wolfie]

And then get told, as indeed was I one evening a couple of years ago, that because I couldn't find a non-existent staff member at the station to authorise the taxi, I couldn't have my £50 taxi fare back. And yes, the TOC concerned even admitted that no more trains operated that evening.



"the overall service is not recovered quickly then that will affect far more people" certainly implies that

Straight to Court....

 

[riceuten]

Death, taxes and no railway staff to be seen in times of disruption only to be told they were there.
It’s guaranteed, every time.

To be fair, I have been told on numerous occasions that there were staff at the station when there were not. It seems a standard customer services response, without even bothering to check.

 

[Horizon22]

Agreed


A useful explanation which admits that things went wrong rather than, as some have, seeking to justify the unacceptable.

Thanks. I will add that this is being done 10x over sometimes with phones ringing off the hook so if you aren't taking adequate notes and priortising actions - and keeping passengers moving somehow (not necessarily by train or that specific route) is priority one especially when they are "mid-journey" - you can be completely overwhelmed and only focus on what is in front of you until Control senior managers start calling timeouts and implementing contingency plans. The response improves with experience and over time.

So I can understand how this happened, I empathise with the controllers trying to resolve the incident at an awkward time and the passengers stuck at Hemel, but can still appreciate things went significantly wrong and I would hazard a guess that much of the issue can be pinpointed on lacklustre communication. 99% of the time during a fatality this doesn't happen and people frantically work behind the scenes to get a semblance of a service running which can mean significant delays and cancellations for an incident such as this.

 

[riceuten]

Straight to Court....

Pay to lodge a claim in the small claims court. Pay for it to be actioned when the TOC doesn't respond.

Nein danke.

 

[A0wen]

Have you ever been to Hemel ?

There are zero facilities at Hemel. The station is (publicly) unstaffed after 6pm. Taxis are few and far between, particularly in the evening. There's nowhere to get food or drink at the station and you're a good 25 to 30 minutes walk from the centre of town (almost all of which is closed in the evening anyway). There's little in the way of shelter on the platforms. If I recall correctly, WMT don't answer the phone out of office hours and their social media team appear not to work evenings either.

As it happens I do - used to work less than 1/4 mile away from it.

It's not unstaffed after 6pm - LNW's website says the ticket office is open to 8pm.

And whilst any on-station shops may be closed, the nearest shop is about 100 yards away. FWIW at 10pm at night the same would be true of Milton Keynes or Watford Junction - and you'd have a walk to find somewhere at either of those.

The station isn't in the town centre (I never said it was) but Watford Junction isn't either - that's a good 10 mins walk.

 

[43066]

Nobody to talk to, nobody in offices, nobody on platforms, nobody answering phone lines and help points, unrelated staff not being able to help etc.

That’s a perfectly legitimate criticism. My observation would be that some of the most vociferous complainers on this thread also tend to be pro DOO, destaffing etc.

Straight to Court....

Waste of time and money.