Littlehaven, Horsham train incident not a fatality on 2nd Dec

2Dec/093

Yet another night of disruption on the trains this evening. If you've come to this page from a Google search for train fatality incident accident or suicide for the Littlehaven or Horsham train on Wednesday 2nd December, then I did the hard work for you.

So annoyed that my commute home is once again delayed, I just had to see what actually was the cause when I got home. In fact, the answer was a mobility scooter ended up under a train on a level crossing at Littlehaven, and you can watch a video of scenes from the station. Apparently an air ambulance was flown there and even captured on camera by a local.

I can't believe that the trains at 7pm were still delayed, given that the incident was reported cleared at 2.29pm in the afternoon, according to National Rail. Why does it take so long to get the trains back in order? If you were on the many trains home tonight, why not leave a comment.

On a bit of investigation, I found a report by the Samaritans, ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies) and the Rail Safety and Standards Board on Reducing suicides at railway stations. They report that between the 1st and 20th March 2006, the average impact of a suicide was 77 trains resulting in 1,489 delay minutes. Okay this report is 3 years old, but wouldn't be surprised if this number is about the same, if not more these days. Dread to think just how many people are committing suicide on the tracks each month or year, but it feels like the line from London to Brighton / south coast it's nearly every week.

I'm not implying that this man at Littlehaven was an attempted suicide (and I hope he recovers well), but it goes to show, any type of incident disrupts the network, and adds to the misery that is commuting. Apparantly 15 people have lost their lives on level crossings in Britain in 2008, with more than 3,400 incidents of misuse. Blimey. People are either stupid or too impatient, and I can see why the slogan says "Don't run the risk".

I wrote a post earlier this year on train suicides, fatalities, trespass, incidents and breakdowns, which resulted in hundreds of people coming to this website searching for the truth of their delay home. Quite odd when you look at Google Analytics and people are coming to your site after searching for "balcombe train track jumper".

On that note, I never got to watch the Three and Out movie with Mackenzie Crook, which was a film about railway suicides. The trailer is below.

Tagged as: Commuting, train Leave a comment

Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Alan Holland
December 3rd, 2009 - 09:31

I too was affected by the incident last night, or at least I presume this was the problem, I tried to get the 20.05 Worthing to Victoria train, intending to get off at Burgess Hill, but it turned up 25 minutes late, and once on it there was an announcement saying it would stop at Hove only and then non stop to Haywards Heath, leaving most of the passengers to get off at Hove, wait another 20 minutes to get a train to Brighton and then wait there for another train stopping on the way up to Victoria.

When I questioned the ticket inspector why it wasn’t stopping at Burgess Hill he said it was to make up time. Couldn’t quite work out who that helped as practically everyone on the train had to get off somewhere and wait for later trains?

I also was affected by the incident at Balcombe tunnel a couple of sundays again and saw total chaos at Three Bridges station for around 3 hours before something approaching a reasonable (though by no means normal) service resumed!

Whilst I have every sympathy with families and relatives of anyone hurt or injured in an accident, rail or otherwise, I think it is about time the powers that be actually considered the consequences of halting train services while any investigations are carried out? As I understand it, the Balcombe incident was sparked by a body found beside a line, I may be wrong here, but that would suggest the train that hit it had long gone, if that were the case?

So why not move the body away from the line, cordon it all off, and allow the trains to continue to run. Instead, we have trains totally stopped for over 3 hours in both directions causing absolute chaos on the roads around Crawley and Three Bridges in particular, (and probably elsewhere too) and from what I watched it was perhaps rather fortunate there weren’t further casualties as a result of this? Did seem quite strange that there were no police to be seen sorting out this carnage until very late in the day, and I had a clear view of it while I had a couple of beers and a meal in the pub directly opposite the station.

Why are the majority of travellers and other bystanders totally inconvenienced because of an incident involving just one or two people?

If the accident HAD cleared several hours earlier, why did nobody have a clue what was actually going on at Worthing and Hove???

I tend to think the problem last night on the 20-05 to Victoria was not a case of making up time for the passengers on the train, but actually ensuring the driver and the ticket inspector didn’t actually finish work too late?

Why else would I (and lots of others) have to get off a train travelling through the station I wanted (and was scheduled to stop there!) and get two more trains in the process, thereby adding around an hour to MY journey time?

Oh yes, and then there was the disruption to trains from Brighton on Monday evening too when there was signalling failure at Haywards Heath and, apparently an arrest on a train there too. Maybe one of the passengers had finally had enough of this farce?

What next?
Jim Haysom
December 3rd, 2009 - 10:40

Hi Alan,

Great to see you’ve written more than me! Proof that I was not the only pissed off commuter searching the web for answers.

Anyway, I reckon the Snooty Fox pub opposite Three Bridges train station should do some sort of offer for train passengers, discount drinks or food in cases of rail disruption.

My train terminated at Three Bridges and there was not a lot of happy people about. I’m sure a pint or two would have appeased the situation.
Mary B
December 7th, 2009 - 10:42

Hi, I too was affected by this disruption. I was travelling from Redhill to St Albans (via East Croydon). I left an hour earlier that I intended as I had looked online but I was still late for my connection on First Capital Connect (don’t get me started on the ongoing disruption on those trains due to lack of crew). At Redhill they said that a special service, fast to East Croydon was being run but it ended up stopping at all the stations to there anyway.

I often wonder if their is a bank of excuses (a common one is a lorry has gone into a railway bridge!!) which is why I checked out on google re the one the other day.