On Wednesday there was a power failure at Sevenoaks station from around 08.50 until well into the evening. The ticket office was closed and the ticket machines were not working. And, once darkness fell, the whole of Sevenoaks Station was in total darkness – including the main concourse, ticket office, stairways, platforms, taxi rank/short term parking and Car Park No. 1.
The station remained open and trains continued to stop but the only light was provided by a few staff with torches / lanterns and by a stationary train at Platform 4. Why was there no emergency lighting?
One might reasonably expect that as an absolute minimum there would be emergency lighting throughout the station building and on the platforms. Emergency battery LED lighting is inexpensive enough even for domestic use, and as the platform lighting columns have recently been upgraded to LEDs it would not have been difficult to have arranged for at least a proportion of them to have battery backup.
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ndeed we have been told that it is a legal requirement now in all workplaces that emergency lighting had to be fitted to fire and escape routes. The Fire Precaution (Workplace) Regulations 1997 prescribe that “Emergency routes and exits must be indicated by signs and emergency routes and exits requiring illumination shall be provided with emergency lighting of adequate intensity in the case of failure of their normal lighting. also: ……..devices provided in respect of the workplace (for the above) shall be subject to a suitable system of maintenance and be maintained in good repair”. We’re not sure whether this applies to railways (the rail industry sometimes succeed, at least for a while, in gaining exemptions from the laws that apply to everyone else); but we think it should.
Update: Southeastern have said that they ordered emergency lighting when the power failed, but that it was delayed on route. Since there were nearly 8 hours of daylight after the power failed the delay seems inexcusable – even if they sent it by one of their trains. And it begs the question of why there is not battery-powered emergency lighting installed in the first place.
At Sevenoaks Station around 09:20 ticket office shut, one ticket machine working but only taking cash, PIDs on but not displaying any train information and general lighting apparently OK. We assumed it was some sort of computer failure. However, at 15:30 everything was off – lights, PIDs and all ticket machines – but there was an emergency light on the stairs to the forecourt. Outside the station the traffic lights were off and there were no lights in the shops opposite the station.
I got off a severely overcrowded train at Sevenoaks in the dark at about 18.30pm, the platform became crowded as passengers for further down the line had to get off the train to let Sevenoaks commuters off. This led to groups of people trying to move in different directions against each other. Whilst I recognise the platform staff have a difficult job to do I feel they were either poorly trained (they were certainly poorly equipped) or failing in their safety responsibilities as they didnt appear to be paying close attention to how many people were close to the train as it departed. Then immediately after the train departed one staff member started chatting away with someone, he was not watching the train depart nor shining his torch to help passengers negotiate their way to the stairs. With so many passengers so close to a moving train in the dark I feel this was a very dangerous situation that was not adequately supervised.