Spyke wrote:

I too believe that the 450, 444 and similar trains should have a way of
clearly indicating whether the doors are closing under the guard's
command or auto-closing. Otherwise, even when the doors are
auto-closing, people have a tendency to throw themselves through the
doors when they hear the beeps, fearing the train is going to depart.
I believe the 166s provide the distinction by not beeping when
auto-closing (probably not allowed these days).

Chiltern appeared to have that one sorted for a while in that guards
would blow a whistle before pressing "close" (assuming there were no
platform staff to do this). This only, for obvious reasons, happened
on the section with guards! This seems to have disappeared again,
however.

Works in Germany, and costs less than a quid per guard...

Neil