One Under

It was only a matter of time I suppose. Some people manage to go a career in London Underground without dealing with a person under a train, which we rather callously term a “one under”, but in my job it was a matter of when, not if, I would have to deal with my first one.

I was on the phone to the controller talking about run of the mill stuff when, in the background, I heard a train mayday call come in on the controller’s radio system. All LU trains have a unique radio in the cab, and one press on the radio’s mayday button will send a priority call to the controller which sets off a very distinctive alarm in the control room. As soon as we heard it, the controller hung up on me and went to answer the call. Of course every call is treated as though it will be real, which is why the controller hung up on me to take it, but I wasn’t too fussed as most maydays are in fact false alarms related to the “deadman” switch which is intended to detect if a driver keels over while at the controls but which normally ends up alerting us that they have left the cab without shutting the train down.

Two minutes later the telephone started to ring and, on seeing that it was the controller, I knew what was going to be said when I picked up. I felt the bitter taste of adrenaline in my mouth as soon as I heard those words – “mate, we have a one under down at xx”. Once the phone was back on the hook and I had the details noted down, I had to take 30 seconds to think through my next actions. I tried to think of this as just another incident, but it was difficult to get over the fact that this was going to be my first one under. What was I about to see? What would be going on when I got there?

I gathered my stuff together and asked the manager in charge of train crew to get me a spare driver. The spare and I jumped in the car and raced down to the scene of the incident, about a 15 minute drive away. Everything was much calmer than I had expected. The station and train had already been evacuated by the staff there and all three emergency services were already on site. Traction current was off and the poor driver already had a drink in his hand and was being looked after and questioned by a very understanding police officer.

Checking on the driver was my first priority. Seeing that he was in good hands, I moved down to where the train had come to a halt, just one car in to the station. Paramedics were with the girl, while the police and fire brigade stood around chatting in low tones, waiting for their bit to begin. I updated my service manager and called the Network Operations Centre to find out where the Emergency Response Unit were. The ERU are our emergency service and they are the experts in dealing with many things, including people under trains. They can get people out from underneath trains, they can split trains down and even jack them up as if they were simply changing the tire on a family car. It turned out that my job was simply to co-ordinate the efforts of everyone on site, along with the usual pressure of trying to get things up and running again as soon as possible.

The paramedics pronounced the girl dead and left very quickly once that was done. Now things swung in to action. We couldn’t yet move the train as ERU were still about five minutes away, but the police began to check the CCTV and make enquiries in the area to try to rule out the involvement of anyone else. This became my focus too – I needed to do anything I could to convince the police asap that this was suicide and not a crime. If the police declare a crime scene then we can kiss goodbye to the service for the rest of the day, the station and the train will be locked down, preventing us from running anything in that area. I got the police access to the CCTV playback suite as quickly as I could, and took them through the footage over and over again. It was not nice to watch once, let alone that number of times.

ERU turned up and, with the fire brigade, managed to get the body out and the train moved. Meanwhile the police gave the all clear and we started to get things back up and running. The spare driver took the train to the depot to get it cleaned up. Meanwhile, the police had found the girl’s handbag and were going through her things. She had a decent amount of money – not a suspiciously high amount, just enough to know that she wasn’t in any need of cash. She had two books, bought just an hour before at WH Smith. This is what troubled me. Why did she do it? She clearly intended to read those books. What clicked in her mind that made her want to end it all, forever?

On leaving the scene my shift was over. In fact, it had ended about an hour before, but I can’t just walk out once an incident has started. I was left to think about what had happened. I got to bed eventually and after a while was able to sleep. I very much doubt that the same could be said of the poor driver that night.