Anti Social Scumbags

[AD11]

3 guys broke windows on 6.14 (Mullingar) service this morning leaving us delayed overall by an hour more or less after being 'stranded' around Leixlip.

2 of them tried forcing a door open after pulling emergency switch. If they had managed to get it open at the time they would have been picking pieces of them off a train going in the opposite direction.

As it was they moved on to another carriage and according to twitter / newspaper reports they smashed windows and escaped on to the tracks with the Gardai in hot pursuit.

I got out of bed at 5.20 for this - things can only get better

[James Howard]

Strange time of the day for scumbags to be about but I guess that train leaves Longford early enough for people on an all-night bender. There really is a need for some kind of staff presence on trains. What if this were an 8-car 29k unit - there is no staff at all on the back half of the train.

If you were injured or had a laptop smashed in an incident like this would Irish Rail be judged as having failed in their Duty of Care to customers?

[berneyarms]

The newspaper report below has more information.

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-n...-30071544.html

Not sure about what any staff member could do in those circumstances without backup. They were high on drugs according to the report above.

Utterly bizarre incident - very scary for anyone onboard the train.

[AD11]

Indeed, it's definitely the earliest I've ever seen this sort of thing and like yourself JH I've been commuting a fair long while. Lets hope it's not the start of a new trend.

[James Howard]

I wouldn't expect any staff member to intervene given the risks to personal safety, but they certainly would have seen the situation developing and been able to alert the guards so they could have been waiting at a station. The problem is that with no Irish Rail presence on the train, situations like this tend to develop unobserved until they get out of hand.

I am really glad I wasn't on that train. Fair dues to Irish Rail for handling the disruption though - the Times is saying the train was only 35 minutes late which is not bad considering. It does sounds especially bizarre that the third guy completed his journey.

[AD11]

I see over on the Irish Independent website that the keyboard warriors were out in full force as to what they would and wouldnt have done to them lads if they had been on the train.

In reality they would have done like everyone else - watch on in stunned silence as 2 of the morons tried to force open the door by kicking it and then repeatedly tried to smash the glass in the door with the emergency hammer.

It appears they were more 'successful' in another carriage where they broke through window or windows? Now, that must have been really upsetting / scary for passengers in that carriage.

[Mark Gleeson]

Circumstances this morning were beyond crazy.

On train staff would have not intervened on safety grounds. When any of the emergency handles are pulled or the glass hammer is removed from its case the driver gets an alarm and the exact location on the train computer, driver has CCTV which will automatically pull up the camera nearest the incident.

Driver has a choice when the emergency handle is pulled, either to stop or to continue by pressing a button within 5 seconds. Clearly given the CCTV with broken windows stopping is the best option. If the door release was pulled the brakes apply, that's probably why the train stopped outside station. That said policy if gardai are needed is delay arrival at the platform until support has arrived.

Reality is the two scumbags this morning got bail this afternoon so are free to cause more trouble this evening

[AD11]

I just hope they are not using the other side of their return ticket on my way home this evening