I hear the train a-comin', it's rollin' round the bend

[venta]

I got back into Ealing Broadway around midnight last night on the train. Ambling up the platform and vaguely patting my pockets to make sure I hadn't lost something, I became aware of some shouting ahead and looked up in time to see a bloke dropping down between the train and the platform.

It was clearly deliberate - he was lowering himself, not falling - and my first thought was that he was going to retrieve a dropped phone. This is in the gap between the platform and a train which is due to depart at any moment. Surely, whatever you've dropped isn't worth that...

A few people were banging hard on the side of the train and yelling, presumably trying to attract the driver's attention. As I got level, the bloke and some other people on the platform were just lifting up the thing that had dropped down onto the track... which turned out to be a woman of about 30.

I didn't see her fall, I've no idea how she came to fall down the gap. I wouldn't have thought the gap was big enough at that point. As she was manhandled back onto the platform, she settled down as if for a comfortable sleep. She didn't look terribly conscious - I have no idea if she hit her head in falling, or fell because she lost consciousness. Perhaps she was very drunk, and oblivious to everything but the chance of a lie-down.

I think my approach to rescue would have been to jump onto the train and stand between the doors (the train won't depart til the doors close) and pull the red handle-thing that passes for a communication cord these days. The geography of train carriages is such that you can do both those things at once. I reckon the most important thing is to make sure the driver of the train knows not to drive away then you can worry about how to get someone back up off the track.

I can accept that, having seen someone you care about[*] fall down the gap, you might panic. Maybe you don't form a properly rational plan, you just go for what seems like the quickest way of helping them back up. I'm just not sure that any degree of panic is enough for me to overcome the complete terror of getting run over by a train.

Then again, people do weird things. Years ago, waiting on a railway platform with my dance team, a bloke on the opposite platform jumped down and walked over the tracks to get a light for a cigarette. We hauled him up on to our platform just as our train arrived. It left us scared and shaky, but him completely unmoved. He was quite drunk; for myself, I can't imagine being sober enough to walk straight, but drunk enough to have decided that oncoming trains are no real risk to me.

Anyway, last night the woman was successfully retrieved from the track, and by the time the man was starting to climb up again the station staff had become aware of the problem[**] and were running around frantically. I figured it was all under control and there was nothing I could do to help, so headed on home.

But I still don't understand why people aren't more scared of trains.

[*] At least, I'm assuming that the guy and the girl were travelling together - perhaps he was a well-intentioned (but not terribly smart) bystander.
[**] The two nearby staff members were in the little staff cubby hole where the computers live, and seemed extraordinarily slow to realise that there was something amiss on the platform. Which is one better than when I collapsed getting off a train a couple of years ago, face-planting into the platform and dropping my bag onto the track, when there no staff present at all - despite it being broad daylight (and despite First Great Western's insistence that there were).

Comments

[ailbhe]

My god how terrifying. No-one pulled the alarm?!

[venta.livejournal.com]

They didn't seem to have done - though I'm not sure I know what the alarm sounds like (or indeed whether it's audible through the whole train or just for the driver).

With hindsight, possibly I should have pulled it as soon as I saw that people were doing weird things. Although by that point, sufficient people were making sufficient noise and commotion that I think the driver must surely have been aware.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

From my experience at Sloane Sq with a 4 year old, the whole train can hear it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes. I had assumed that it would be clearly audible - I've been on trains several times when someone's pulled the panic cord in the disabled toilet (it goes "BEEP! The disabled passenger alarm has been sounded. BEEP! The disabled passenger alarm..."). But never the general panic thingy.

Should one ask about the Sloane Square and four-year-old incident?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Here.

(My mistake, I thought he was 4 at the time but I see it was not long before his fourth birthday. I knew it was 2007, anyway.)

[ceb.livejournal.com]

A year or so ago I was on a very full train (such that we could not reach the alarm) which hit something with an incredible rattling noise. We said alarmedly "someone pull the alarm" and everyone within reach stood round like lemons mumbling excuses.

In this case, it was loud enough that the driver probably noticed anyway, and a suidice, so the driver might have seen them any case. :-/ But still, argh, idiots.

[venta.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding a bit ghoulish... I wouldn't expect a suicide to rattle. I wouldn't have expected a body to be solid enough to stand up to the weight of a train at all.

Then again, I'm always surprised that car crashes go "bang". I'd expect them to go "crunch". I guess the bodywork crunches, but the chassis goes bang.

Lemonism doesn't surprise me. Something about train commuting does seem to be bring out the worst of the I-don't-want-to-get-involvedness of people. Probably the daily effort of pretending that all those other people aren't there :(

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Me neither, our first guess was that we'd gone over a big tree branch or something. I suppose there are quite a lot of things underneath a train available to hit, and at least some of them will be hollow and make a big noise if you hit them with any force.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine got run over by a train once. He'd gone (drunkenly) down onto the tracks to try and nick a sign, when he heard the train coming. Knowing he couldn't get back up in time, he decided to lie down between the tracks and let it pass harmlessly over him.

This would have worked OK except that in the gap between each pair of carriages there was a tremendous updraft, which sucked him up off the ground only to be then hit by the second carriage's front axle. At speed, this might have produced a rattling noise of the kind you describe.

(He survived, although breaking lots of bones and so on.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

He wasn't called Matt, was he?

A friend of mine claimed this happened to him, although it always sounded terribly improbable!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

He was called Matt! – and still is. Either this happens to Matts a lot, or else it's a very small world.
(Although, considering my Matt is a role-player of goth tendencies, perhaps not all that small.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds like the same guy :) I didn't know you knew him.

(Although.... ditto ;)

I shall now feel faintly guilty for never quite believing him, if you can corroborate!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

We were at school together! – he was one of the very first people I ever role-played with. Back in 1981 or thenabouts.

Mm, it definitely happened. In Southampton. I wasn't there myself at the incident (I'd just recently left for Oxford), but I saw him in hospital afterwards.

I seem to remember that the sign he was trying to nick said something along the lines of "Danger – stay off the tracks", although that may be wishful memory-embroidering.

[venta.livejournal.com]

"Danger – stay off the tracks"

That was certainly in the story as he told it to me (probably ten or so years after the event).

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Wow, I feel like this knowledge will come in handy at some point.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It was hard won, so I hope someone some day benefits from it! Although would be nicer never to be in the situation.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

A shockwave goes through the car when it hits something. The crunch happens very shortly after.

A body...is many solid pieces after the initial impact. They may or may not be connected :/ poor drivers.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do also feel very sorry for the train/tube drivers.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I was on a train (National Rail to Whitby) that hit a sheep once, and it went CLANG.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Whether it's audible depends on whether they pull the alarm or the door release. Both stop the train, but the latter don't ring - or didn't on the SouthWest train I was on that had it pulled, anyhow.

For what it's worth - I'm scared of being hit by a train.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Because I catch a stopping train to work, from a station which is also on the express line, it's quite common for fast Paddington trains to roar through on the next platform while I'm waiting for my more sedate service. I find the shock of displaced air that hits you as the train passes quite... well, quite shocking actually. It produces quite vivid imaginings, which I'd rather it didn't!

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Heat-stroke or dehydration on the part of the woman? In this weather I'm surprised there aren't more tumbles. My mum has a tendency to faint in stuffy tube carriages and thus is terrified of going on London Underground without someone with her to catch her in case of fainting.

As for jumping on tracks, since I was raised in South London where the tracks have an electrified third rail, even legitimately crossing railway tracks (at rail crossings) is still hair raising psychologically for me. I'd find it very difficult to get over the childhood conditioning of not touching rails.

Then again, you never know how you'll react until you're in the middle of a situation. I shall try and keep your solution in mind!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, at midnight it was a reasonably cool train (with openable windows), but in general yes. I'm also surprised there aren't more people collapsing on the tube in summer.

Of course, I'm not guaranteeing I'd think of my solution in the event of a crisis! I did think on the spur of the moment last night of jumping between the doors to stop them from closing, but whether I'd have remembered about the alarm thingy is a different question. Or indeed if I'd have thought at all if it had been my friend on the tracks!

[shermarama]

I must admit I rather like the experience of going against the conditioning of moving around a modern city - walking down the middle of a road when it's closed to traffic, or even just looking at a road, at the space between buildings, and imagining what it would feel like if it didn't have those layers of 'this is the car bit, don't go there!' stuck on it. It's a perfectly sensible conditioning to be scared of trains, but I also like the odd chances you get to just consider them as objects, not a potential danger, like at transport museums and stuff. So I suppose I'm saying I can empathise with the person who just jumped down there; there are times to break the conditioning.