I read with horror the story in today’s Manchester Evening News about a man falling between the platform and a train at Greenfield station in Oldham:
A DAD has told of his miracle escape from a ‘death trap’ after getting stuck between a train and the platform.
Paul Steele slipped in pouring rain as he was handing over two-year-old daughter Chantelle’s pram to the conductor at Oldham’s Greenfield station.
The 36-year-old father frantically freed himself and managed to get on board before the train set off.
Greenfield is not the only station to suffer from death trap platforms. Northern Rail and Network Rail have been told by passengers here at Walkden – and reminded repeatedly by representatives from Friends of Walkden Station – that the platform is an unsafe height. There must be many other stations across Greater Manchester that suffer from the same problems. Here’s what FOWS have to say on their website:
The height between carriage doors and the platform is as much as 17 inches in some places, much too high for safe, comfortable boarding and disembarking of trains.
We understand the problem has been caused by track maintenance operations which have steadily raised the level of the railway lines over the years. Northern Rail, Network Rail, and GMPTE have all acknowledged the problem but no rectification work is planned.
FOWS believe the large gap presents a serious safety issue, with at least two passengers having fallen into the gap and onto the track in the last few years.
Latest status … (10 Dec 2007) FOWS have written to the chairman of Network Rail about this specific problem, but been told that Network Rail have no plans to fix it until major construction work is next performed at the station. At present we do not believe any such work is planned, so we have escalated the issue to the government’s rail safety watchdog (the Office of Rail Regulation) to ask for their intervention.
I can only hope that the rail companies do not wait until the horse has bolted before they take action on this issue. It would be a tragedy if it takes a death or serious injury to provoke action.
LET’S SEE: Elevators in buildings have doors so that people don’t fall down the shaft while waiting. People are not allowed to walk across airport runways or drive vehicles across airport runways. Yet people all over the world are forced (or allowed) to stand right next to a big drop-off on a railroad platform. STUUUPID!!! Here in the U.S., some train stations have no pedestrian overpass or tunnel and people are forced to walk across the track(s) where trains are going as fast as 79 miles per hour. Isn’t that just brilliant? Then when someone gets hit, the RR and the jackass government officials blame the victim! “THEY WERE TRYING TO BEAT THE TRAIN!!”, they scream. The parking lot is on the other side of the track(s) and these poor folks have to try to dash over the track(s) just to get to their cars. NO ONE should be allowed or forced to stand close to where a train may hit them in a station or where they may fall or get pushed over the edge of a platform and onto the track(s.) Humans pride themselves on their intelligence. Well, there is a boatload of stupidity floating around this world and the boat seems to be getting bigger, not smaller. BOTTOM LINE: railroad station platforms should NOT be death traps and all the greedy / idiot owners have to do is put in some moving doors, just like the elevators have, so that PEOPLE are separated from the trains and track until the train arrives and comes to a full stop. As they say, IT AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE!!!!! BUT, don’t hold your breath on any safety improvements—they cost money and the greedy RR jerks don’t want to spend a penny on safety when they can just blame the victims every time.
If they’ve raised the level of ballast by 17″ over the years, perhaps now they could jack-up the bridges by 17″, so there’ll be less collisions with the low-bridge!