[12/11/2012] Incident at Bray

[James Howard]

HRidge, that was a very informative post - thanks for taking the time to describe what must have been a very upsetting situation.

I am usually the first to complain about Irish Rail but it sounds as if they did an excellent job in these circumstances. It sounds as if the communication with the people on the incident train was excellent and it obvious that the GardaÃ* are going to want to keep all potential witnesses in the one place until they are in a position to take names and addresses and/or speak to them.

While it sounds as if things could have been better for those on other services, resources are limited and they were deployed where they were needed most.

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by shweeney

I got on a 45A in DL to continue a lengthy journey back to Greystones, then noticed @irishrail tweeting that the line would reopen shortly so got off again and took the DART to Dalkey. (Greystones is awkward to get to by bus these days)

That was at 21:15 and the line didn't actually open until after 22:30. Obviously not much IE can do about these incidents, but quality of information was as usual pretty poor.

In fairness to Irish Rail, they were told by the RSC at 2125 that the line was about to be handed back for traffic. That proved not to be the case. Services actually resumed at 2245.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by HRidge

I was on the train that hit the victim last night, in the first carriage where we felt the full force of the thud that ended someone's life and the drag underneath the carriage.

HRidge, your account reads like a gripping piece of fiction, which makes it all the more terrible that it's true.

It does sound like IR did a great job under the circumstances at the scene.

Is it possible though that IR could just have the same high quality contingency plans for addressing such incidents beween any 2 stations? Given the account, maybe this isn't the right place to expand too much on it though.

Is there any reason for example, that last night, IR could not have run trains normally, as they did to Dalkey, where there are changover points, and then a shuttle Dart on one line running back and forth between Dalkey, Killiney and Shankill, and then a Dart shuttle between Bray and Greystones, leaving only Shankill to Bray, where the incident was. Shuttle buses could then operate between just these 2 stations, or just have a couple of staff directing people to Shankill town to pick up the 84 / 145 to Bray. I think this might have got more people to their destination more quickly than everyone changing at Dun Laoghaire.

[HRidge]

I'm sure in theory there was a better way for transport arrangements to be made for other commuters but in reality its not possible. Irish Rails main concern was the tragedy that happened and the safety of us on the train. I think people have to remember that it may have taken everyone an extra hour (or 3) to get home but at least they got home. Someone didn't return home that night, and a families world probably fell apart.
I don't get why people get so worked up over a few extra hours and a little inconvenience for one evening.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by HRidge

I'm sure in theory there was a better way for transport arrangements to be made for other commuters but in reality its not possible.

I don't agree. We asked Irish rail to put in place a system whereby passengers could get information from the website if there was an incident. They refused to collate and publish the information, as it would mean admitting that bus routes paralleled the rail routes and they weren't in the business of advertising bus routes.

Irish Rails main concern was the tragedy that happened and the safety of us on the train.

Without wanting to be crass, after such an incident, priority needs to be with passengers. People have real needs and responsibilities - familial, socio-economic and medical to name a few. Not being able to deal with those situations can be stressful, distressing or even harmful.

Nothing, bar human decency and decorum (and we insist on it), can be done for the deceased.

The fact is, as Dalkey-Bray wasn't operating, once the response teams were in place, CTC had a job no more difficult than than usual. Instead of turning around trains at Bray or Greystones, they had to do it at Dalkey. However, they didn't have to deal with track and platform allocations or passing trains for Bray and Greystones.

I think people have to remember that it may have taken everyone an extra hour (or 3) to get home but at least they got home.

But that needs to be multiplied by (typically) thousands of people, who are often left to fend for themselves at locations they don't know, with no information and no means of getting home.

I don't get why people get so worked up over a few extra hours and a little inconvenience for one evening.

It's not just one evening, there are regular incidents (engine or other system failures, electrical or signalling issues, track faults, bridge strikes and, yes, trespassers of various types) throughout the network. At practically every such situation, the incident response system falls apart from the passenger's point of view.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Colm Moore

It's not just one evening, there are regular incidents (engine or other system failures, electrical or signalling issues, track faults, bridge strikes and, yes, trespassers of various types) throughout the network. At practically every such situation, the incident response system falls apart from the passenger's point of view.

Exactly. There will always be unplanned incidents. There should be a plan in place to take account of an incident
(a) at each station
(b) between any two stations
that minimises disruption to other passengers and can be put in place quickly by the person in charge.

You get the impression there was no planned reaction to an incident between Shankill and Bray. Just an of-the-hoof reaction. Emergency services plan for incidents that they hope they will never have to deal with. By the sound of it IR to their credit even planned how to deal with the tragedy that occured. But they don't plan how to deal with the rest of the travelling public in the best way.

[James Howard]

If you want to talk about incidents in general, then this is a different discussion, but based on the first-hand report, to me it appears that this incident was pretty well handled. It appears to me that they applied triage to the situation and prioritised resources towards dealing with the incident train.

The fact is that that railway is run on very little slack nowadays. 10 years ago, you had inter-city trains with 5 or 6 staff on them (maybe you still do on the Cork line but my regular trains have precisely one Irish Rail staffer on them and he can't be relied on after hitting some poor unfortunate on the line), every crossing was manned and every signal box and station had one or more staff. This level of staffing simply does not exist any more and there are no actual people to provide the resources to implement emergency plans where somebody can be provided to have a conversation with every affected passenger at every station on the line.

From what I read in HRidge's account, it appears to me that there was a plan to use a second train with wheelchair ramps to get people on the scene to sort things out and to eventually get the passengers off the incident train when the investigators deemed it time to release them. It simply is not possible to use the second line in these situations because there is too much danger of an emergency worker being hit.

Now, for the more workaday disruptions such as train failures, signal faults, bridge strikes, level-crossing strikes, etc., I would agree entirely that something more could be done. These happen often enough that there should be contingency plans and resources to implement them and it often appears that the response is entirely inadequate.

But thankfully, the incidents involving people being hit by trains are much rarer and to deal with them requires a level of resources much greater than can be economically provided for the 364 days a year that they aren't needed. Personally, I am willing to take the chance of a ruined evening every few years as opposed to paying an extra grand a year for my train pass in order to get me home an hour earlier on the off-chance there is a major problem.

[whatchutalkinboutWillis]

my issue was with your first post,

Usual poor communication from Irish Rail, passengers on train told nothing

people are quick to put the blame on the driver for lack of announcements!!

when there is no announcements in other occasions then it should be mentioned that the driver made no effort, delays of service,train failures etc etc.. But In this case with a incident of this nature I dont think it was right for you, to post putting that driver in a bad light when something this trerrible has just happened to him/her.
As it turns out he DID make annoucements, i can only imagin people siting on that train were on twitter twitting about no announments, as that poor driver was walking back with his lamp to check the sitaution out.
lack of info, conflicting info, more of that came from railuser twitter which jumped to conclusions as tweets came in by its followers, as your tweeter account gave vague details, the very same time irish rail tweeter was giving the really details of the incidient. im glad i follow both. . i didnt check the irish rail website but theres a link on the page that displays the twitter account on the IE website, surely people could find it.. it takes 1 click of a mouse its timetables and service updates and on tha page is the twitter account on the website.. which was been updated as the night went on!
IF he had not made a annoument(just saying) there would have been staff/gardai at the train in 15/20minutes they could have took up the duty to tell passengers on board that train, i think most(all) people would excuse the wait for info once they were told what had happened as u said 150-1500m away from the station they would have been 15/20 min.

Something to keep in mind, In the future if such a terrible thing happened again..not all drivers might be capable of making that announcement like that driver was ...its easy to sit at a laptop and post up comments tellin the driver what he/she should of done . little or no training is giving to train drivers on how to deal whith a suicide,IE give after help, but at that very moment drivers are in unknown territory, all they know is emergeny call ctc signalman, get signal protection both lines and get ctc to get emergency services out.


What is expected is that after CTC received the call and following the notification of relevant incident teams, that CTC would make the announcement - we understand there is this capability.

when u say this are you trying to say ctc can make announments on board the trains? answer is no!.. a pre recorded message which a driver could play over the pa giving a simple explanation, till other parties arrive i think would be a good idear.

There is an entire organisation of nearly 5,000 people and surely, between them, they can come up with an incident recovery plan and implement it.

1st off colm thats bit of a cheap pop at IE..

Well, when a incident like this happens, its not really as simple as clean up and get trains goin again,as alot on here think!!!
gardai are investigating
A Coroners is investigating
irish rail are investigating
Rail saftey are also out doing the same
emergency services are doing there thing
to add to the difficulty for all them involved it was dark out there that night as its not a well light part of the dart line.
Thats why IE normally say sevices are suspended until futher notice. And IE dont give a time because it could give false hope to the public, that the line is goin to reopen in 2 hours and then it those not, when a incident like this happens and like i said all those partys are involved how can they possible put a time on it when services will resume..

peolpe struggling to get home south of dalkey there seemed to be a decent plan in place i know it would take longer but thats no fault of ie or db,
i wasnt at a station at the time but i be pretty sure the PIS had details showing services are suspended until futher notice, and db would honour rail tickets.. them PIS screens are on every platform(dart line,northern commuter ex greystones not sure about maynooth line?), they dont just give the times of the next train there is always other info displayed along the the bottom a lot of people just see next train Delayed and they lose the plot.
theres staff at most stations, even tho tweeter is updated before staff on the ground are updated.
also help/info phones that can be used to contact staff.

then noticed @irishrail tweeting that the line would reopen shortly so got off again and took the DART to Dalkey.
IE didnt say it was open, they said would open shortly, if i was sweeney when coming close to DL i would hav been checkin tweeter to see if it was open!!! before travelling on to dalkey..

for people goin to greystones IE should have put on a dart shuttle service between greystones and bray no need for the single line to be closed, so people could have got bus from Dl to bray and a dart bray to greystones or atleast had the option for peeple.

[Mark Gleeson]

When I met a senior Irish Rail manager during the week, he quite openly accepted that there were weaknesses in the communication to passengers and that the information provided could be improved, exactly as Colm has highlighted.

Its rather pointless to tell passengers that the line is expected to reopen shortly, hard fact is what is required not further confusion.

The DART by design allowed a PA to be made from the control office in Connolly to any selected DART train anywhere on the DART network, but curiously we understand Irish Rail disabled this feature some time ago. It would be illegal to operate a train with only a driver without this feature in the UK, so again serious questions of Irish Rail's safety and management.

[Inniskeen]

Yes there was a feature which allowed CTC to make announcements directly onto DART trains - surprised to hear it has been disabled.

Direct announcements from CTC should be trivially possible onto virtually all existing rolling stock, not just DART. Might require some patching between the train radio and the PA system, but hardly any rocket science stuff.

I know of some instances where drivers have refused to operate services if the PA system was non functional. Maybe not too much of an issue on a lightly used two piece railcar but a different matter on an eight car train with anywhere up to 1300 passengers on board.

[Mark Gleeson]

My understanding is that some of the DART fleet still have the function, but not all. I don't know which have the feature or not and CTC have no way of knowing which is which as they can't remotely determine a trains actual fleet number in real time, but the information is encoded in the radio

No railcar unit was ever fitted with this feature All units carry the exact same radio unit.

On WIFI equipped units they have in theory remote control over large parts of the non safety gear and get exact GPS location, again if its enabled.

This is a very serious issue, imagine we swap Bray for the Vale of Avoca, you are pretty stuck there, no idea where you are, no access and dodgy mobile coverage

[Inniskeen]

I didn't say any railcar had been fitted with a facility for direct PA from CTC.

What I did say is that it would be trivial to provide the feature - probably just a matter of a few patch leads and a bit of software configuration.

One person operation really requires that in the event of the operator being unable to communicate with passengers (or the control centre) then it should be possible to establish communication between passengers and the control centre and vv.

[whatchutalkinboutWillis]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

When I met a senior Irish Rail manager during the week, he quite openly accepted that there were weaknesses in the communication to passengers and that the information provided could be improved, exactly as Colm has highlighted.

as a few people haved copped u adn colm are talkin in general,
they done a good job when it came to this incidient..
senior manager, not hard to find one of those more managers than staff. and not hard to find one tha be happy to tell ya what ever you wanna hear if it saves grief down the line..

Its rather pointless to tell passengers that the line is expected to reopen shortly, hard fact is what is required not further confusion.

line wil reopen soon, it keeping people upto date with the progress, want them to keep sayin, it closed, its closed, and then its open, all of a sudden.

The DART by design allowed a PA to be made from the control office in Connolly to any selected DART train anywhere on the DART network, but curiously we understand Irish Rail disabled this feature some time ago. It would be illegal to operate a train with only a driver without this feature in the UK, so again serious questions of Irish Rail's safety and management.

if it was a saftey feature that was required by eu with its safey laws, the rail saftey crowd wount hav let the IE bring the new icr's in to service with out it.??

i think this radio feature your talkin about, that ctc can use the pa on the dart is the new gsm-r radios there getting in the future which are already in use in the uk and parts of europe,were that feature is possible to do on the gsm-r.. dart line only getting gsm-r,no money for the rest..

all the train radios, rail cars locos darts have the very same radio in the cab. so if ur sayin it could be done on a dart, could be done on any train,

ctc signalman or the regulator can contact the driver by train radio by calling it radio code P652, E108 etc or make general calls to all train radios, they can call train radio
make general calls
send emergency stops
send hot axle messages.
there no feature on there phones up in ctc to do such a thing and take over a train pa. im sure in this day of age its easy possible, but i think thats were the gsm-r radio comes in, the radios at the minute are a bit simple to be capaple of such things

the pa system is not worked tru the train radios except the jap darts all the rest use a indivdual pa systhem..

[Mark Gleeson]

The 1984 DART spec allowed for PA CTC to selected train. It was there but seemingly got removed/disabled.

People say we are little too frank about details but take a visit to Irish Rail's website and give you 5 seconds before you go what the hell...