"SB" wrote in message
...
Sadly there was yet another person hit by a train at Southall on
Monday evening (yesterday).

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/co...c=669.msg87663

This is very sad - but why so many at Southall anyway? It does seem to
be a regular occurance.

Anyway you would have thought that First Great Western might have had
a contingency plan for such occurrences by now.

I suspect they had. BTP's target time for reopening a railway after a
fatality is 2 hours. If you could get a fleet of buses to Paddington to take
all the passengers it would almost certainly take the best part of 2 hours.
So no point. It would also be likely to take nearly as long to call in off
duty managers and staff from home. Again no point.
What should have been done is to keep passengers informed as far as possible
(via tannoy and screens), reassure those with connections down the line to
contact the conductor when they do get away, so that arrangements (hold last
connections, arrange taxis) can be made. Make tickets available on LUL and
SWT and advise passengers for Heathrow that they may travel via LUL and that
passengers may also make their way to Waterloo for Windsor, Reading, via
Basingstoke, etc.
Trains in the station, which would be the first ones out when the line
reopened, should be loaded - so they can be got away quickly when this
becomes possible, and, to the seating capacity of the trains, to give
passengers somewhere warm to sit and wait.
Presumably the Greenford shuttle kept running until end of service, carrying
passengers to Acton Main Line, Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, and the
Greenford branch
If there was a train crew with route knowledge via Banbury after the
Christmas diversions, a train to Bristol or Siouth Wales should have been
diverted via Banbury, calling at Oxford, Swindon and usual stations.
I'll leave it to BAA and the airlines how they cope when passengers arrive
late at Heathrow because BAA's HEx and HConn trains were not running.

Peter