../2006-07-19-fatality-at-ferntree-gully

Fatality at Ferntree Gully

My train arrived at Bayswater, as usual. The station PA speakers at Bayswater station where announcing something repeatedly - it sounded like "no trains from Upper Ferntree Gully". It was difficult to comprehend. Good. No need to worry. Then most of the passengers started leaving the train. I still didn't know what was going on.

Fortunately the train driver, announced over the train PA system that there had been a fatality, and there would be no more trains until further notice, so I knew what was going on. The message was "no trains from Bayswater to Upper Ferntree Gully" (later changed: "no trains from Ringwood to Upper Ferntree Gully" - although that got confused with at alternative version: "no trains from Ringwood to Belgrave").

I was delayed by 1 hour 30 minutes (due to fatality at Ferntree Gully) at Bayswater, due to Connex's inability to arrange a replacement bus service sooner. The replacement bus service when it arrived 90 minutes later was already so full (it started from Ringwood station) many people wouldn't fit and had to wait for the next bus. At the very least it would have been nice if somebody could have told us "come back in 90 minutes". The only information was from the regular (and nearly empty) replacement busses heading in the opposite direction: "very soon now".

Since then I have wondered if maybe the first busses went express Bayswater - I was on the last train that stopped at Bayswater.

I heard the theory that the reason the PA announcements were difficult to understand, was because the speaker was speaking too close to the Microphone. Made sense it a way - the canned automatic messages were crystal clear.

/public_transport/