# Caltrain Passenger Wakes Up Trapped Inside Empty Train



## TinCan782 (Mar 26, 2014)

This happened to someone on a plane a while back too...

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/Caltrain-Passenger-Wakes-Up-Trapped-Inside-Empty-Train-252135751.html


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## The Davy Crockett (Mar 26, 2014)

Sometimes you really do lose when ya snooze. Sounds like a crew snooze too.


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## Texan Eagle (Mar 26, 2014)

From the article-

"A South Bay woman is calling on Caltrain to make changes after she fell asleep on a train"

"Method said she would like to see emergency call boxes put into the trains. But Caltrain said that would cost taxpayers millions of dollars."

Yeah right, it is Caltrain's fault that you, an adult, willingly decides to go to sleep on the train without keeping an alarm to wake you up at the right time. When will this entitled mentality of "my stupidity is YOUR fault" ever change?

As for action, I am totally expecting Caltrain conductors will soon start making announcements "Sleeping is not permitted onboard Caltrain".


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## Blackwolf (Mar 26, 2014)

CalTrain should have charged her another Fare Zone for the move from SJC to the maintenance yard, plus damages caused by her breaking all the things she could find to try and set off "some kind of alarm."

I would really like to imagine how the Southern Pacific Railroad Police "Bulls" in the 1950's would have handled something like this...


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## tp49 (Mar 26, 2014)

I don't even know why this was newsworthy it happens a lot on the Long Island Rail Road.


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## Trogdor (Mar 26, 2014)

Texan Eagle said:


> From the article-
> 
> "A South Bay woman is calling on Caltrain to make changes after she fell asleep on a train"[/size]
> 
> ...


Obviously, putting emergency call boxes would be expensive, but as for action, disciplinary action against the crew that parked the train (which is going to happen, according to the Caltrain spokesperson) would be expected. They are supposed to walk through the train to make sure things (or people) aren't left behind.

Frankly, I find your tone quite ridiculous. She fell asleep. Nothing indicating she planned to fall asleep. People doze off all the time (even when they're operating trains). I bet very few people out there set alarms "just in case" they fall asleep. Do you set an alarm every time you get on a train just in case you fall asleep? I highly doubt it. The suggestion that someone do so on a short commuter trip is quite asinine.

Fault with this lies squarely on the crew. People fall asleep on transit all the time. It's up to the operator to make sure they're not still on the vehicle when it goes out of service. It's as much a matter of safety/security of the crew and equipment as anything else.


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## George Harris (Mar 26, 2014)

I am inclined to believe that this should be regarded as an oversight on the part of the crew. However, this whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. If she had ended up dead or attacked, yes, a stronger reaction might be waranted. but in general seems like she overreacted. There was nothing said in the info I have seen about the type of equipment or where she was in it.. If one of the older gallery cars you can be hard to see in the upper level seats. If the newer bi-levels, then a walk through both levels should not miss anybody, no matter how small they are.

It happened to me once, but on the 4th and King end. I was in a gallery car upper level. When I woke up and realized I was alone and walked out, all doors to the station were locked. I did get someone's attention and they let me out, and I had not given the incident a second throught until this event. I considered this sort of thing a shared blame event. Yes, the crew should have walked the train and found me, but then I should have not been so out of it that I missed the end of the line.


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## TinCan782 (Mar 26, 2014)

In the interview, she seemed to be pretty upbeat about the whole experience.


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## OlympianHiawatha (Mar 26, 2014)

Conductor's Controls? I quit reading at that point.


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## chakk (Mar 27, 2014)

Reminds me of my step-son a decade ago falling asleep as a pre-teen on Caltrain out of San Francisco. A crew member woke him several stops beyond his attended stop and put him off the train in Atherton because he had by then travelled beyond the end of his paid fare zone (the prior stop in Redwood City). He called me from the Atherton police station and I gladly went and picked him up with my car.

It remains one of those "family stories" that gets recalled occasionally at family group dinners when he is in town from his job as a fire protection safety design engineer.


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## MIrailfan (Mar 28, 2014)

the station may have been loocked but you can always exit. Exits have to remain unlocked per fire code except in prisons and psych wards.


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## SarahZ (Mar 28, 2014)

MIRAILFAN said:


> the station may have been loocked but you can always exit. Exits have to remain unlocked per fire code except in prisons and psych wards.


She was on the train, not in the station.


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## trainman74 (Mar 29, 2014)

MIRAILFAN said:


> the station may have been loocked but you can always exit. Exits have to remain unlocked per fire code except in prisons and psych wards.


What Sarah said applies to this case -- but have you ever seen a sign above a door reading "this door to remain unlocked when building is occupied" or something similar? Exits are _often_ locked when there is thought to be no one in a building.


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## Green Maned Lion (Mar 29, 2014)

They are still unlockable via panic bars.

You can open locked train doors from inside. They generally have detailed instructions on how to do so.


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## trainman74 (Mar 30, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> They are still unlockable via panic bars.


Well, no, that's the whole point of the "this door to remain unlocked when building is occupied" sign. Those are doors that don't have panic bars -- one obvious example is the glass doors at the entrance to a store or restaurant. There will be a door _somewhere_ equipped with a panic bar, but someone trapped in a building may be panicking a bit and not looking for an alternate exit (human nature is that you want to leave by the same door you used to enter).


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## cirdan (Mar 31, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> They are still unlockable via panic bars.
> 
> You can open locked train doors from inside. They generally have detailed instructions on how to do so.


Every time we get a story about somebody managing to open the door of a moving train and falling out, we get demands to make doors more difficult to open.

Yet every time somebody falls asleep and can't get out, we hear calls to make it easier.

Or more seriously, people struggling to get out of a train that's on fire or has derailed in an accident.

So will all intentions cancel one another out?


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## John Bredin (Apr 2, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> They are still unlockable via panic bars.
> 
> You can open locked train doors from inside. They generally have detailed instructions on how to do so.


I don't know about "locked" but I once slept through morning-rush arrival into Ogilvie station (Metra, so bi-level cars same as the older Caltrain cars) and the doors were closed though we were still in the station. In the vestibule of every car is a valve painted fire-engine red and clearly marked that one should turn the valve to release the door air for opening the doors. Did that, opened the door, and stepped off onto the platform with no need for an emergency call-box or to break anything.


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## George Harris (Apr 2, 2014)

cirdan said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > They are still unlockable via panic bars.
> ...


This is where you run full face into reality. You cannot fix everything. It is also a good example of the reality that to fix one issue can unfix something else. Automobile airbags are an outstanding example of this. Think of the problems that airbags give you with pregnant women, infants in car seats, small children. I frankly am inclined to believe that the fix might be worse than the problem that it was supposed to solve. Just be sure you fasten your seatbelt! The greatest benefit is for the adult that is not wearing a seatbelt, for which case it is an attempt to protect people from their own stupidity. If they are that stupid do you really think they will follow the precautions concerning those that should avoid being next to one?

There is also the very real fact that many times you are not getting a complete story for both the trapped in the train and the fallen out of the train stories. I recall a few years back a story about a person killed by a train in a railroad tunnel. The tone was on the order of the person was trapped with no place to escape. Yet when I got the location of the tunnel, it was on a section of railroad that had been the subject of a major clearance improvement program in the 1960's so that there was 8 feet between center of track and tunnel wall on one side and 12 on the other, which means that there was nearly 3 feet clear between side of train and tunnel wall worst case, and at track level more. What was left out of the story? I am not even going to speculate, just to say the story was not complete.


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