MEET THE CHAMPIONS

New ‘stranded passenger champions’ are among the measures putting rail users first whenever a train becomes stranded

Keeping customers satisfied when everything goes according to plan is easy enough – doing so even when things go wrong is the real challenge.

Among the biggest causes of passenger frustration is when a train stops unexpectedly.

That’s why our Control team has put in place new standards and processes dealing specifically with stranded passenger trains – which can be summed up by the ethos ‘the customer comes first’.

Key to the new system are ‘stranded passenger champions’ – people in different roles around the business, who are on-hand to make sure looking after customers is a priority whenever and wherever a train becomes stranded.

One of those to take on this new role alongside their day-to-day duties is Andy Ward, senior network lead.

“The big difference is that, while in the past the passenger experience during these incidents was certainly a priority, now it’s the priority,” Andy said.

“This can be as simple as ensuring drivers communicate with passengers to explain why a train has stopped, to arranging for other colleagues to attend a stopped train, with a friendly smile, bottles of water and doing what they can to look after the wellbeing of passengers during the stoppage.”

Supporting passengers 

Another important change in mentality is taking on equal responsibility for a stranded train, where before it was seen as primarily a Network Rail issue.

“It’s their infrastructure, but at the end of the day it doesn’t say Network Rail on the side of our trains,” Andy said.

“When something goes wrong, the operators are the most visible cause for passengers, and so they suffer the commercial and reputational impact.

“That’s why it’s in our best interests to make sure we play a central role in managing these incidents, and doing everything we can to support passengers is key to that.”

To help ensure that everyone knows what to do when a train becomes stranded, regular training exercises are carried out in conjunction with Network Rail, Transport for London and train and station colleagues.

Andy explained: “In any incident it’s important we quickly identify at least three ways of resolving the situation.

“These will vary depending on the situation, but at a basic level ‘can we move the train forward to a station?’, ‘if not, can we move it backwards to free up the track?’ and lastly ‘do we need to detrain the passengers?’, which is a last resort. But it’s all about doing what is the safest option for the passengers.”

Positive results

A recent example of these new processes in practice saw a service carrying over 100 passengers became stranded between Mitre Bridge Junction and Willesden Junction due to a locomotive failure at the former.

Quick-thinking by the team ensured the stoppage lasted only 30 minutes by moving the train into North Pole Turnback siding, having the driver change ends and then move the train to Shepherd’s Bush station, where it was safely detrained.

Each month sees around a dozen stranded passenger train incidents, the majority of which are resolved in under an hour – with some four-week reporting periods seeing average times as low as 24 minutes.

Imogen Hudson, emergency planning and resilience manager, has played a key role in drawing up and implementing the new measures across the business, who said the initial results have been positive.

“It’s early days but it’s already having an impact, and huge credit to those members of colleagues who have taken this new mentality to heart,” she said.

“We’re still consulting with teams around the business to finalise everything, but once that’s done, we’ll be producing the guidance in booklet format to help make everyone aware of how they can support passengers on stranded trains – whatever their role is.”