Doors that don't lock on Amtrak

So there is a big kerfuffle over in Scotland right now over "central door locking". You have the Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig that runs a steamer and 6-8 Mk1 coaches from long ago. The doors, just like on our rolling stock, do not lock. This is a violation of UK code that specifies all mainline cars must have door locking.

Has this ever been a problem here aboard Amtrak? Superliner and Horizon doors open manually. I was once aboard the Chief around 2008 when a lounge car door popped open after hitting a low spot in the track west of Fort Madison. I'm a bit surprise the FRA, who won't let a dining car have movable chairs anymore, has not said "there oughtta be a rule" and mandated doors locked up tight.

Also interesting is the UK attitude toward laws and regs - most Scots and Brits online are tut-tutting the operator for not following the law, which means their tourist trains are on pause. THe operator claims it is a 7 million pound project ($8.85m usd) and the payback period is over ten years. Here in the states I think most fans would be on the side of the tourist train operator bemoaning the regulations.

Oh, the irony of this happening with the Jacobite train.......

Seems to me that central locking would be a safety and evacuation risk. What happens if the power fails?.....

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That regulation seems particularly silly considering that from the beginning of railways until the 1970's or so passengers routinely opened and closed the exterior doors themselves, including on short-haul coaches (known as "slam-door" stock) which had such exterior doors on both sides of each compartment. Commuter trains arriving in London regularly had many doors already being held open by a passenger with one foot on the running board ready to detrain just before the train stopped. Passengers waiting to board the outbound trip knew enough to "stand behind the yellow line" to avoid being bodyslammed by an open door on the incoming train. I don't know that people got too concerned about it at the time. I believe the term "nanny state" was coined in the UK, and this seems a prime example,

The rule is now 20+ years old, and other heritage/charter operators have these mechanisms on their trains. Why should this one company (that has been repeatedly fined for safety violations and had a train operator jailed for violating a stop signal) get special treatment?

An older BBC pieces notes that 26 people fell from moving trains to their death in the UK in 1987.

How many of those other heritage charter operators are Scottish?.... Just saying. They're overdue for another rebellion.

Small fry compared to EL and NJT which ran the Comet I fleet with open doors. An episode of Unsolved Mysteries in the late 80s mentions a commuter who accidentally drowned in the Passaic River through an open door in the vestibule as he was about to get off at Newark Broad Street.

Diverting away from Amtrak affairs, Mr. R36, but does your immediate ever remind me of what was standard practice on the New Haven some seventy years ago.

Riding the #2XX, the Stamford Locals, as a kid, it was standard practice to leave the traps open for the entire twenty miles and the thirteen station stops Mt. Vernon to Stamford.

My Mother always said "Don't walk between the cars", which was advice I carefully adhered to. All I can say is that when X-ing the Mianus, Eastward "it was a long way down" (Westward there was a catwalk).

RandallW wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 4:34 am The rule is now 20+ years old, and other heritage/charter operators have these mechanisms on their trains. Why should this one company (that has been repeatedly fined for safety violations and had a train operator jailed for violating a stop signal) get special treatment?

An older BBC pieces notes that 26 people fell from moving trains to their death in the UK in 1987.

If they've had a 20 year exemption, and nobody has been hurt, seems like a nonsense law to me.

Also the locals are saying "this is for the yankees that might not know about unlocked railway doors". I love posting pictures of the CofNO over alligator-populated Lake Ponchartrain with unlocked doors.

Finally the cost to equip said Mk1 fleet is said to be 7m british pounds, with a payback period of 10ish years. That's not acceptable investment criteria.

They didn't have a 20 year exemption--they had (and failed to take advantage of) a 20 year window from the rule going into effect to become compliant. Other companies did take advantage of that time frame to spread the work around to avoid a cash crunch or to simply replace older non-compliant equipment with new equipment.

Why would a heritage railway want new equipment? Doesn't that sort of miss the point of a heritage railway? Seems like another solution in search of a problem.

(I wonder -- did the BBC mention what percentage 26 passengers was of the total rail ridership in the UK that year?)

No, they've had a 30 year exemption according to the West Coast Railway site (quoted below).

Saying that a historical railroad should be obligated to use more modern equipment is about as tone deaf as it gets.

Further details

What is the dispute with the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) all about, and why does West Coast Railways (WCR) believe it should receive an exemption from the ORR.

The ORR has a policy (called Regulation 5) for all heritage Mark 1 and Mark 2 carriages (the Mark 1’s are used on the Jacobite trip) to have central door locking (CDL) fitted, so they can continue to run their carriages on the mainline rail network in the UK. The basis of this policy is to ensure the safety of rail passengers when travelling in these heritage carriages.

Why then is WCR requesting that it should receive an exemption from this?

There have always been exemptions granted under this policy and WCR has had exemptions on these carriages for nearly 30 years. In the court case in December 2023, the Court judgement helpfully summarises the policy as follows:

“The ORR’s policy gives a strong steer that central door locking will be required, but it nonetheless makes clear that ORR will consider granting an exemption from Regulation 5 where an applicant can “demonstrate that there are exceptional circumstances”. Two examples of exceptional circumstances are given but they are not said to be exhaustive. It is ‘expected’ that any deviation from the policy “provide an equivalent level of safety protection to central door locking” but the requirement is not mandatory.”

Other companies are operating on the mainline rail network, using the same mark 1 and mark 2 carriages that WCR use. The ORR has allowed them to continue to run under an exemption granted by the ORR, even though these carriages have not been fitted with CDL. WCR has not been granted the same exemption as these other operators.

As this policy is deemed to be about safety, it is clear from the above that this is not the case, otherwise no operator would be allowed to run these carriages without have CDL fitted.

Is this about WCR not being up to the level of safety that these other operators are?

Again, it is very clear from the court case in December 2023 that this is not the case. The ORR Admitted to the court that there were no safety concerns with WCR’s operating procedures adopted when running these heritage carriages.
In fact it is WCR’s contention, as submitted in their application for an exemption continuation, and in the comprehensive risk assessment attached to the application (produced by an independent Health & Safety company), that the current method of having two door locks fitted to each door (one main lock, plus a secondary deadbolt), plus having a steward present in each carriage, is far safer than having to spend millions of pounds to fit CDL.

Exemption: WCR have requested (and fully expected to receive, as other operators have), a temporary exemption, whilst the ORR considered it’s full application.

We are working closely with the ORR to reach a speedy conclusion to this, but until then we have had to suspend running the Jacobite service. This is affecting not only WCR, but over 100,000 passengers, the majority of whom are tourists to the West Highlands, this in turn affects thousands of local businesses and employment in the area.

Further updates will be posted here on a regular basis.



West Coast Railways

Seems like when I rode that route (honestly, one of the most scenic routes I've ever traveled) during '79. There were no issues. I took the Sleeper London Euston to Ft. William, then boarded a self propelled car (RDC, DMU; whatever). That was simply one ride using a Brit Rail Pass.

Now it appears that you must accept all the "folderol" that is part of the upscale excursion trains and paying God knows what.

What happens when someone falls from a train? Police / EMS / whatever shutdown a railroad so they rescue the person or retrieve the body and to investigate. If this happened on the (just for the sake of the argument) on the NEC approaching Secaucus Junction at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, it would be the cancellation, delay, or annulment of multiple trains and thousands of people demanding safety protocols to ensure this doesn't happen again. I'm not sure I'd take a statement about safety exemptions from train operator that has been previously banned from running trains for short periods of time and had its crews jailed for unsafe operation of a train at face value.

RandallW wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 6:51 am What happens when someone falls from a train? Police / EMS / whatever shutdown a railroad so they rescue the person or retrieve the body and to investigate. If this happened on the (just for the sake of the argument) on the NEC approaching Secaucus Junction

This is commonly the line heard from UK regulators and the fan base over there that has zero ability to question authority. I say okay, let's follow the question to it's logical end.

Erie Lackawanna ran thousands of trains through Secaucus for years with doors unlocked, open, traps down. How many people died?

How many people were hurt on similar operations with open doors on New Haven, Wabash, etc..?

How many poeple are hurt on Amtrak superliners moving daily through out the country with hundreds of unlocked doors and thousands of passengers?

Far as I can tell, the number is zero. We have yet again fallen into the trap of "OHMYGOSH IT SEEMS SO SCARY!!!".

And of course we have hundreds of grade crossing fatalities every year and nobody blinks an eye. Every few years a vehicle blocks a grade crossing and kills some train passengers in addition to the driver. You barely hear about it.

Lets not forget that people literally fall off trains to their death in India and probably other countries every day...

Try better to keep the hyperbole in context, Randall.....

This is a historic railway operation, not taxpayer subsidized mass transit or intercity rail.

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