It’s not about the doors! It’s not about who pushes a button! 

We have been sent this by a passenger who was travelling on the derailed 06:19 hrs service from Milton Keynes to London Euston on 16th September 2016. The train was comprised of two four-coach class 350 electric multiple units, a total of eight coaches.

While you may have seen the incident in the newspapers and on television what was not reported was that the driver of this train was trapped in the cab and the guard took over safety critical duties and train evacuation. We sat on this for a while with the hope our union would make something of this. Hopefully they will in the very near future. We will add more to this as soon as we can.

 The passenger states:

“The guard on the train after the derailment was amazing. She kept us inform via loudspeaker of all the different updates all the time (we were never left in the dark about what was happening, how far was the rescue train from us, etc.), first she told us they were going to evacuate us, then that they were going to move the people in the first 4 carriages on the last 4 and move the train out but as this was impossible and we’ll have to wait for a rescue train. When the emergency lights went off after a couple of hours and all the carriages went dark, she explained to us the reason why apart from updating us via loudspeakers, she walked up and down all the carriages few times, asking if people were alright, she then left opened all the inter-carriages connection doors as well as the outside doors to let some fresh air circulate in the all train She liaised with the firemen, paramedics and British Transport Police when they arrived And she also kept us all smiling by finishing all her messages by ‘Keep Calm’ …  Being on a derailment train made me realise how important the guard is while before I may not have pay much attention to the role of the guard.”

ITV news story here

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