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