Elizabeth Line / Crossrail Updates.

[RJS1977]

38 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Now if that had been 100 miles from London everyone would have chatted, and you would be considered rude if you did not.

Here in mid Wales you say hullo to just about anyone you pass in the street. But I joke that if you had done that in Harpenden where I lived for 25 years they would have reported you to the police.

More seriously, are volunteers obtained in this way really typical? I would have thought that too many of them would have sufficient interest in railways to be better informed than the typical off-the-street individual. And how many were children or were disabled, did not speak English etc?

Jonathan 

 

I suspect that the test is to make sure that the corridors etc are large enough and that the PA systems can be heard in all carriages etc, rather than testing that everyone follows the instructions.

[St. Simon]

11 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

A bit of a day out for many of them no doubt. I'm told by someone who was involved that they were 100% TfL employees although obviously a goodly percentage of them would have no operational type of involvement in their everyday work. 

Hi Mike,

 

One of the videos seemed to imply that some of the volunteers were members of the local community ‘obtained’ through local searches.

 

I suspect it is a mixture of both.

 

Simon

[Ron Ron Ron]

2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

.......More seriously, are volunteers obtained in this way really typical? I would have thought that too many of them would have sufficient interest in railways to be better informed than the typical off-the-street individual. And how many were children or were disabled, did not speak English etc?

 

 

I suspect many people for TfL don't have any interest in railways. Many will be admin and other staff.

According to the links given earlier, the exercises appear to have involved disabled people (or people playing the roles of disabled people) including some in wheelchairs and some blind.

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

Does it matter where the volunteers are coming from, or who they are?

They just need large numbers of representative bodies to carry out the safety exercises that have to be completed and to give the staff, actual hands on experience in dealing with a list of emergency scenarios.

Obtaining most of the volunteers in-house, so to speak, seems like a logical and commonly used route.

 

[corneliuslundie]

I am sorry but I disagree. One needs a cross-section of typical users of the Underground system, some people who have never taken any interest in it, some people who have. Volunteers who have links with the scheme in any way will not behave the same as uninformed "Joe Public". They won't do daft things or not understand what they are being told to do. But I am glad to hear that there were at least attempts to se how disabled people coped.

(If you want to see how people in the real world behave, just look at the level crossing or bridge bash threads here)

Jonathan

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

I am sorry but I disagree. One needs a cross-section of typical users of the Underground system, some people who have never taken any interest in it, some people who have. Volunteers who have links with the scheme in any way will not behave the same as uninformed "Joe Public". They won't do daft things or not understand what they are being told to do. But I am glad to hear that there were at least attempts to se how disabled people coped.

(If you want to see how people in the real world behave, just look at the level crossing or bridge bash threads here)

Jonathan

Those people are hardly going to volunteer for an exercise, or you suggesting TfL introduces a Press-gang on London's population.....?

 

Seriously though, they did not ask only for the fit and mobile, only that if you or any member of your party had any disabilities/infirmities, that you declared them.  My Dad is a pretty mobile 77y.o but he didn't leap down the ladder to de-train at the Custom House evacuation.  There were also props used (and labelled as such), including large luggage and folding buggies, to see how inconvenient removing them would be.

 

Many public behaviours won't particularly change the outcome of the exercise; 500 people all detraining at once at a station and all wanting to use the escalators to leave, will create bottlenecks somewhere.  The exercise is to validate the model that says the bottlenecks will be here and here and will only last N seconds before dispersing.  I suspect this Sunday's trial will not involve being told where to go, but to follow the signage; this will confirm whether it is clear and intuitive.

[woodenhead]

It does appear that disabled groups are not completely happy with how CrossRail is testing when it comes to disabled groups

https://hydeparknow.uk/2022/02/19/crossrail-accessibility-trial-operations-disabilities/

 

But Crossrail did respond by stating they are including a representative mix

 

[Grovenor]

The worst thing about CrossraIL is having new trains where evacuation to the lineside is by portable ladders when other railways have had trains with built in ramps that can be deployed from the ends for many years. Hopefully the use of the ladders will be very rare but when they are needed they make evacuation slow for everyone and mean anyone with a wheelchair has to be carried, and that can be very difficult. There is no excuse for this, IMHO.

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

TfL introduces a Press-gang on London's population

What a great idea for increasing the passenger numbers!!

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Grovenor said:

The worst thing about CrossraIL is having new trains where evacuation to the lineside is by portable ladders when other railways have had trains with built in ramps that can be deployed from the ends for many years. Hopefully the use of the ladders will be very rare but when they are needed they make evacuation slow for everyone and mean anyone with a wheelchair has to be carried, and that can be very difficult. There is no excuse for this, IMHO.

I was under the impression that in an emergency you de-train to the walkway alongside the track. Most people doing that without assistance.

Is that not the case?

[Grovenor]

There are only walkways in the tunnel. See the ladder in one of the evac pics near Custom House above, or maybe it was linked.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Grovenor

[Mike Storey]

7 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

I am sorry but I disagree. One needs a cross-section of typical users of the Underground system, some people who have never taken any interest in it, some people who have. Volunteers who have links with the scheme in any way will not behave the same as uninformed "Joe Public". They won't do daft things or not understand what they are being told to do. But I am glad to hear that there were at least attempts to se how disabled people coped.

(If you want to see how people in the real world behave, just look at the level crossing or bridge bash threads here)

Jonathan

 

That is true, of course, and whether they achieved that, or not, is up for debate.

 

However, I have attended many, and indeed helped supervise some, evacuation exercises, in various situations, over 25 years. But, real life throws you a curved ball every time. I remember only too well, when I was a fairly big cheese in RT Major Stations, a real bomb threat at Kings Cross in the late 1990's - "real" because we had had one "real" bomb go off a few years earlier. I just happened to be there at the time. The evacuation of the station, and despatch of trains out of harm's way, went reasonably well. But the number of (mainly) city gents who insisted I opened the cordon to let them through because "they had to catch" a certain train, was staggering. They just assumed it was an exercise, I guess. I cannot imagine any other plausible reason they would behave in that way. The BT Police were the only ones who could persuade them of their error. I had similar at Brighton several years earlier, although that turned out to be a rotting banana skin in a bin (which we still had then) which had set off a bomb gas detector on a routine search.

 

I am not sure how you can arrange an exercise to realistically include that sort of behaviour, although it has been noted in several such situations, and it causes significant risks, especially because it blocks evacuation routes. My main concern is not the trials themselves, but the fact that BT Police numbers have been so reduced in the last few decades that authoritative presence at any such emergencies will be inadequate.

 

[corneliuslundie]

Not only City gents. My boss once refused to leave his desk during a fire practice.

I have every sympathy with those trying to make these things realistic and therefore a real test. As you say, fate always throws a curved ball. 

Perhaps at the next trial Nearholmer (I think it was he who was involved) should either refuse to leave the train "because it is a false alarm" or rush through the crowd pushing everyone aside and simulating absolute panic. Or perhaps not.

BTW I seem to have led a charmed life in London. I was too late home that night to get caught in the real KX fire. I had a day working at home when our Docklands offices were blown up by the IRA and I was on the bus (on the same route) after the one which was blown up in South London. After that Kosovo seemed quite peaceful.

But that was very off-topic, for which I grovel.

Jonathan 

PS And I shell keep off bananas.

[RJS1977]

57 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

but the fact that BT Police numbers have been so reduced in the last few decades that authoritative presence at any such emergencies will be inadequate.

 

 

Not only that, but in recent decades, BTP officers have been called on to undertake police duties away from the railway if BTP officers are closer than members of the regular local force. Whilst there are benefits to that approach, particularly in emergency situations, it reduces available BTP officers still further, and officers of the local force are not able to undertake BTP duties as they do not have the correct training (PTS etc).

[adanapress]

There used to be a wonderful collection of folk, whose hobby it was to play the injured (or with various conditions)  at accident exercises.   The make up,  bandages and so forth were remarkably

realistic, Dr Allen the famous photographer of the GE and participant in such exercises remarks upon their theatrical skills.  Some were ' in shock', some were a bit slow on the uptake anyway etc etc

Maybe they've passed away anyway!

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, adanapress said:

There used to be a wonderful collection of folk, whose hobby it was to play the injured (or with various conditions)  at accident exercises.   The make up,  bandages and so forth were remarkably

realistic, Dr Allen the famous photographer of the GE and participant in such exercises remarks upon their theatrical skills.  Some were ' in shock', some were a bit slow on the uptake anyway etc etc

Maybe they've passed away anyway!

I think they were called 'The Casualty Union' or something similar.

 

Jamie

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I think they were called 'The Casualty Union' or something similar.

 

Jamie

Casualties Union - and they are definitely still going - the last time I saw them on an exercise back in the 1970s plenty of them were in their teens.  They are absolutely brilliant and know exactly how to confuse first aiders with the way they describe their symptoms etc and their make-up can be truly gruesome with some very realistic compound fractures of limbs or much worse.  

 

But that isn't all they do as they can supply some extremely good 'distractors' who can latch on very quickly to who is in charge and then start distracting them with all sorts of usually very plausible sounding stories.  And they even go in for grabbing 'rescuers'' and pulling them in the wrong direction although that can go wrong as on one RN exercise one of the distractors - a young woman - was doing her stuff really well until a CPO got fed up with her and laid her out with a single punch on her jaw.  I saw her in action at a later exercise she did with the RN (a simulated train crash) and she picked on the young Lieutenant in charge of the initial party and kept him away from doing anything useful for more than 10 minutes - the comments about him on the assessor's record sheet did not make pretty reading.

 

www.casualtiesunion.org.uk

[DY444]

On 11/03/2022 at 16:54, Mike Storey said:

 

That is true, of course, and whether they achieved that, or not, is up for debate.

 

However, I have attended many, and indeed helped supervise some, evacuation exercises, in various situations, over 25 years. But, real life throws you a curved ball every time. I remember only too well, when I was a fairly big cheese in RT Major Stations, a real bomb threat at Kings Cross in the late 1990's - "real" because we had had one "real" bomb go off a few years earlier. I just happened to be there at the time. The evacuation of the station, and despatch of trains out of harm's way, went reasonably well. But the number of (mainly) city gents who insisted I opened the cordon to let them through because "they had to catch" a certain train, was staggering. They just assumed it was an exercise, I guess. I cannot imagine any other plausible reason they would behave in that way. The BT Police were the only ones who could persuade them of their error. I had similar at Brighton several years earlier, although that turned out to be a rotting banana skin in a bin (which we still had then) which had set off a bomb gas detector on a routine search.

 

I am not sure how you can arrange an exercise to realistically include that sort of behaviour, although it has been noted in several such situations, and it causes significant risks, especially because it blocks evacuation routes. My main concern is not the trials themselves, but the fact that BT Police numbers have been so reduced in the last few decades that authoritative presence at any such emergencies will be inadequate.

 

 

^This.  You can never, ever predict what a proportion of real life users will do.  You can almost guarantee that something will happen in the first week that you would never have thought of in a million years.  All you can do is put together as many scenarios as you can to test all the critical procedures as thoroughly as you can.

 

I remember when I was at BT and we introduced 0800 in the 80s.  On the first day we were getting an abnormally high rate of wrong numbers, rejected and abandoned calls.  When we looked into it we found many people thought they could put 0800 in front of an ordinary phone number and get it for free.  It never occurred to us that anyone would do that but plenty did.      

Edited March 13, 2022 by DY444

[RJS1977]

9 minutes ago, DY444 said:

 

^This.  You can never, ever predict what a proportion of real life users will do.  You can almost guarantee that something will happen in the first week that you would never have thought of in a million years.  All you can do is put together as many scenarios as you can to test all the critical procedures as thoroughly as you can.

 

I remember when I was at BT and we introduced 0800 in the 80s.  On the first day we were getting an abnormally high rate of wrong numbers, rejected and abandoned calls.  When we looked into it we found many people thought they could put 0800 in front of an ordinary phone number and get it for free.  It never occurred to us that someone would do that but plenty did.      

 

I can remember a 'Beattie' advert explaining that.

[RJS1977]

4 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

I can remember a 'Beattie' advert explaining that.

 

[Michael Hodgson]

On 11/03/2022 at 10:03, Northmoor said:

Many public behaviours won't particularly change the outcome of the exercise; 500 people all detraining at once at a station and all wanting to use the escalators to leave, will create bottlenecks somewhere.  The exercise is to validate the model that says the bottlenecks will be here and here and will only last N seconds before dispersing.  I suspect this Sunday's trial will not involve being told where to go, but to follow the signage; this will confirm whether it is clear and intuitive.

The bottlenecks aren't caused by one trainload of people being evacuated.  They are caused by all the other trains not running because the line is blocked.  The problems of trying to travel in central London during "the troubles" was the closure of affected lines whenever a supsicious package was found soemwhere.  Although there are plenty of alternative if less convenient tube lines or bus routes, those were overwhelmed during rush hour and quite often it would prove quicker to wait until the trains were running again on the affected routes.  A real evacuation doesn't involve co-operative volunteers, it involves cantankerous and argumentative passengers who are p*ssed off at not being able to get home or who will miss their connections and who won't readily do what they're told.  To be fair, TfL are probably doing the best that can be expected when the line is not yet open to the public.

 

I see any artificality in these tests as due less to the nature/selection of the victims, more the advance knowledge of the staff on duty that they were going to do the exercise.  If you tell your office staff there'll be a fire drill at 10.00 every Tuesday, that will run like clockwork - but ring the bells without warning at 15.37 on a Wednesday and either pandemonium will break out or it will be completely ignored.

[KingEdwardII]

9 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

ring the bells without warning at 15.37 on a Wednesday and either pandemonium will break out or it will be completely ignored.

When the fire alarms went off at a random time in our buildings with 2000 staff (actually caused by a Freon escape, not a fire), we had a clockwork evacuation that worked to plan. The main downside was that it was pouring down and we all got rather damp outside. Cue much grumbling. 

 

Yours, Mike.

[The Stationmaster]

52 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

When the fire alarms went off at a random time in our buildings with 2000 staff (actually caused by a Freon escape, not a fire), we had a clockwork evacuation that worked to plan. The main downside was that it was pouring down and we all got rather damp outside. Cue much grumbling. 

 

Yours, Mike.

We had a simple answer to that in a certain BR building that I worked in during the 1960s - we headed to a particular nearby pub.  And one of the official Fire Wardens subsequently came in to count us as the fire evacuation procedure proscribed..

[Mike_Walker]

27 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

We had a simple answer to that in a certain BR building that I worked in during the 1960s - we headed to a particular nearby pub.  And one of the official Fire Wardens subsequently came in to count us as the fire evacuation procedure proscribed..

Couldn't do that today!  

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

When the fire alarms went off at a random time in our buildings with 2000 staff (actually caused by a Freon escape, not a fire), we had a clockwork evacuation that worked to plan. The main downside was that it was pouring down and we all got rather damp outside. Cue much grumbling. 

 

Yours, Mike.

Same where I used to work (GPO/BT - large onsite workforce) . Always worked well.

Apart from the regular fire bell ringing at a set time, even some of the actual fire drills themselves were randomly done.

Nobody was told it was a drill until the fire brigade had arrived, who were co-operating with it.