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

Comments

[ailbhe]

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

[venta]

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]

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

[venta]

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?

[motodraconis]

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]

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.