A PROBE INTO the incident on the Dart line ahead of the 2022 Bray Air Display where passengers exited a stalled train before the station and walked along the track has found that Irish Rail was “ill prepared” for the incident.

The Railway Accident Investigation Unit (RAIU) has published a report into the events of 25 July 2022, when passengers on stationary trains near Bray station forced open the doors due to unbearable heat and headed for the station on foot, causing trains to be halted on both lines.

In total, around 2,000 passengers “self-detrained” onto the railway line that day, according to the new report.

It had been an extremely busy day for the Dart as passengers tried to get to the air show  in Bray and the All-Ireland Senior Football Final in Croke Park. 

The RAIU is an independent investigation unit under the Department of Transport that investigates serious accidents and incidents on railways.

“No scenario planned emergency exercises/tabletop exercises were carried out prior to the incident at Bray, despite a self-detrainment at Dun Laoghaire in 2017. As a result, IÉ were ill prepared for the incident,” the RAIU report says.

“In addition, as exercises were not carried out, documents were not updated to reflect any lessons learnt, such as the Emergency Scenario Response Risk Register, which was not updated to include the risk associated with self-detrainment, despite being updated regularly.”

The report also notes that there are no instructions for drivers in Irish Rail’s rule book about how to handle self-detrainment or stranded trains.

The investigation unit has recommended to Irish Rail that it conducts a simulation of an incident with the potential for self-detrainment and invite gardaí and Dublin Fire Brigade to participate.

It says Irish Rail should review its high-level emergency preparedness, crowd control plans, risk assessments, train evacuation briefing notes, and all other relevant document to include guidance on self-detrainments.

What happened?

The report has put together a timeline of the events that led up to the passengers gaining access to the tracks.

That morning, a door fault on a train resulted in delays to services, which meant large numbers of passengers were waiting on station platforms. When they were able to board, many passengers were reluctant to move far into the carriages away from the doors because of the heat onboard the trains, the report says.

It says that despite staff and crowd control plans in place at major stations, including Bray, passengers at unmanned station were frustrated because of a lack of information available and the fact that trains were arriving already close to capacity.

“With no station staff present, and given that DART trains are driver only operated, Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail) had no way of implementing processes and procedures to manage the overcrowding on these trains,” the report details.

There were three main trains involved in the incident: Train E268, Train E103, and Train E208.

They were southbound services due to leave Connolly at 1.45pm, 1.05pm and 1.25pm respectively, but all of them were late leaving. They departed from the station in that order.

Trains arriving at Bray Station had been stopping at platform 2, where it was taking around eight minutes for the trains to be cleared of passengers and for the following train to arrive and stop, according to the report.

At 2.47pm, the 12.46pm service from Malahide to Bray arrived at platform 2.

At 2.49pm, the next train on the line — E268 — was approaching the station. A signal located 548 metres before the station was red as the 12.46pm service train was still stopped on the platform.

The report states that there was no air conditioning on Train E268 and that passengers have reported suffering symptoms of heat exhaustion.

“The air conditioning was off on Train E268 (unbeknown to the driver (Driver E268)), and as the windows were sealed (by design) there was no forced or passive ventilation on the train, leading to increasingly uncomfortable conditions for passengers, with reports of some passengers suffering from symptoms of heat exhaustion.”

The driver did not make any passenger announcements when the train stopped at the signal.

After the train had been stopped for five minutes and 32 seconds, one passenger who was travelling with young children and an older person opened one of the doors using an emergency opening device. Passengers started to exit the train.

The driver saw passengers on the line and made an emergency call to the controlling signalman.

By this point, a northbound train due to travel from Bray to Malahide had departed from Bray station. The controlling signalman instructed the driver to stop because of the passengers on the track.

The report says that the signalman also “placed the relevant signals at danger”. As a result of these actions, passengers on the track were not at risk of being struck by a train, the report says.

Train E103 and Train E208, which were travelling behind E268 on their way from Connolly, had been stopped behind it between Shankill and Bray.

“These trains did not have air conditioning but had openable windows. As these trains were stationary there was no forced ventilation and insufficient passive ventilation through the opened windows due to crowding, resulting in increasingly uncomfortable conditions for the passengers on these trains,” the report outlines. 

Passengers on these two trains became aware that passengers on the E268 had forced their way off the train and started to do the same.

The drivers made announcements asking passengers to remain onboard but passengers continued to disembark.

Irish Rail dispatched staff to the locations of the three trains and “made the decision to carry out controlled evacuations”.

The report notes that passengers also alighted from platforms at Dalkey, Killiney and Shankhill Stations and started walking along the railway line towards Bray.