Clive Page wrote:
In article , Clive D. W. Feather
writes
That wording is slightly misleading - Athens has had an underground
metro for some years. I presume they're talking about extensions for
the Olympics.

The last time I used the Athens subway was a few years ago but it was
an interesting experience to see their response to a train failure.

The train suddenly stopped between stations and only the emergency
lights stayed on. After a couple of minutes there was an
announcement, the gist of which a kindly local translated for us.
Then the doors opened, and in a fairly orderly fashion we all jumped
or slid or were helped to the ground; then we all trooped along to
the nearest station, all without the appearance of a guard or any
obvious member of staff. Some lights were on in the tunnel, so the
evacuation wasn't at all difficult. The nearest station was only a
couple of hundred meters away and fortunately for us was the one we
had been planning to alight at; so we just walked up the sloping end
of the platform and exited normally.

I couldn't help thinking that in London, with a similar technical
failure, we'd probably have been trapped for hours. As it was,
everyone used their common sense and we all got out with only a small
delay, and only a few grumbled complaints.

Mass unsupervised evacuation of passengers on to the track of a 3rd-rail
electrified railway doesn't sound like "common sense" to me. How did
people know the current wasn't about to come on again? Is the live rail
shielded?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)