A typical Virgin Pendolino service from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston can carry 550+ passengers. More than an A320 for example.
What security is in place to prevent the hijacking of such a train by terrorists? Imagine the carnage that would result from a 120 mph collision with the buffers at Euston? And a locomotive is much easier to drive than an aircraft is to pilot.

Sorry – I’ve been watching Strikeback and it got me thinking about terrorist plots.

Other people control the points though so I think if a train was hijacked it could be diverted away from the station…?

prevent the hijacking of such a train by terrorists?

[guffaw]Like FirstGroup you mean?[/guffaw]

molgrips – Member
Other people control the points though so I think if a train was hijacked it could be diverted away from the station…?

True, but if travelling at enough speed, it’s not staying on the rails for long.

watch the movie unstoppable.

Rubber dinghy rapids, bro 😉

Is Casey Ryback on the train?

Power cut?

kimbers – Member
Is Casey Ryback on the train?

Never mind that!

Is there a rather large cake anywhere?

How would you get the train to a friendly nation?

Pigface – terrorist don’t always plan on surviving never mind getting back to a friendly nation

Rogan Josh – that would work!

Okay – a diesel loco pulling a train instead.

Wilder and Pryor would save the day

Terrorists on a train

It wasn’t as good as Snakes on a Plane.

divert it onto a conveyor belt

True, but if travelling at enough speed, it’s not staying on the rails for long.

Yeah, but forcing a derailment would save more lives than having it smack into the sushi place, Barburrito and the Paddington Hilton at 110mph.

Alternatively they could get some local kids to nick the signalling cable, whole thing would grind to a halt. Could be a modern version of the Railway Children 🙂

Oh btw the antidote is in the girls necklace

(Spoiler for the op there)

Simply scatter some wet leaves on the line.

network control or signal boxes on the route would need be taken control of, to stop them throwing the points and diverting the train,into sidings or accross junctions,to derail it, if it was an electric train, they would just switch off the power and allow it to coast to a stop.

But there have been various unexplained accidents/collisions on the railways, where the driver was killed, and the controls where set, and no braking took place(names witheld to protect innocent people who died).

The driver could also isolate the AWS and the new signalling one, so red signals wouldnt require him to cancel the alarm, one train crashed because the AWS was isolated and another reached very high speed after the warning system was tampered with and isolated by a driver recently.

Any atempt to overspeed into a terminal station would probably triger SPAD alarms, and for the control centre to go into DIXCEL mode, eg running to the bog.

TPWS

Alternatively they could get some local kids to nick the signalling cable, whole thing would grind to a halt. Could be a modern version of the Railway Children

😀

What security is in place to prevent the hijacking of such a train by terrorists?

And there are almost 3 million Muslims in the UK !!!

Surely it’s only a matter of time ?!!!

Unless of course Muslims are peace-loving people who abhor terrorism. But what are the chances of that? ……. zero from what I’ve read.

It always made me wonder why the IRA never targeted the transport infrastructure during their naughty days in the 70/80s.

Clapham Common was a derailed train accident and that was pretty horrific.

A couple of key road and rail viaducts would probably cause more disruption to more people and create more grumpy members of the public than blowing up shopping centres and remembrance services.

AWS and TPWS as already mentioned would stop the train in the right circumstances but can be both isolated.

Assuming you could then somehow not get wrong routed to prevent you entering a major station you’d need to know the route so as not to speed and possibly derail.

Are we also taking the guard out of the equation? Emergency brake in another cab will quiet happily spoil the fun as well as the passengers panicking and pulling a Pass-Com again dumping brakes until reset.

Could get a bit tedious for them!

Any plans involving train drivers would need to get past Bob Crow first – no chance!

We need giant marshmallows attached to all the buffers.

The driver can usually override the pass com, as was shown happenned in the latest RAIB report, into a rail accident, it allows the driver to continue driving till he reaches a place of safety, not on a viaduct or in a tunnel.

Depends on the type of traction though as to how easy that is, but we would be getting into the realms of being fully trained, not outside the realms of possibility of course, but in that case what can you do unless the person is in some way arousing suspicion.

The thing with terrorism is – you need to create terror. If you look at the underground bombings, or the madrid train bombing or whatever …. Horrible events in their own right, but not really successful as terrorism – they didn’t terrify us, the next day everyone just carried on using buses trains as usual. Thats because using trains isn’t fundamentally scary. We do lots of things every day that are more dangerous than getting on a plane but flying is still a nervy business, most people fly very rarely, it has always been a very overtly safety conscious environment where you have to rehearse the worse possible outcome with every trip. It takes very little to create terror in that context – So while ‘successful’ attacks on buses and trains have changed pretty much nothing, even thwarted attempts with planes – like a liquid explosives – have radically changed air travel

The sheer apathy of the driver would defeat them. “We are hijacking this train!” Driver “grunt” shrugs shoulders.

Although it has to be said when somebody offers I’m out of the chair and hottailing back to the messroom on the “c” of “can we take this train drive?”

[tannoy] calling John McClane John McClane to the forum please [tannoy]

those little hammers could prove quite lethal to an unsuspecting terrorist on a train with 500 angry, desperate people.

I hate it when people use jargon or acronyms when they know other people won’t know what they stand for.
Yes, I’m looking at you project.

I’ve always wondered how much chaos could be caused by a team of synchronised suicide truck bombers taking out strategic junctions of the M25….damage the flyovers/bridges, make the roads unusable for weeks/months while it’s repaired. The resultant gridlock would be awful. Like any other Friday night on the M25.

MoreCashThanDash – Member
I’ve always wondered how much chaos could be caused by a team of synchronised suicide truck bombers taking out strategic junctions of the M25….damage the flyovers/bridges, make the roads unusable for weeks/months while it’s repaired. The resultant gridlock would be awful. Like any other Friday night on the M25.

But, being British, we would all just queue up any way. 😐

I hate it when people use jargon or acronyms when they know other people won’t know what they stand for.
Yes, I’m looking at you project.

Rail accident investigation branch.

There are a massive number of practicalities as said. Easier to take charge, far harder to actually do some damage than hijacking a plane.

And there are almost 3 million Muslims in the UK !!!

Surely it’s only a matter of time ?!!!

Unless of course Muslims are peace-loving people who abhor terrorism. But what are the chances of that? ……. zero from what I’ve read.

Only 34 Islamist attacks have been thwarted in the UK since 7/7.

Hey, at least the Marxists aren’t at at too eh Ernest otherwise we’d be in real trouble.

Only 34 Islamist attacks have been thwarted in the UK since 7/7.

None of Britain’s 3 million Muslims have managed to get on to trains since 7/7 ?

It’s stuff like that makes me realise how lucky we are.

OK thanks for setting the records straight on that one then.