ORR and Transport Focus, the passenger watchdog, jointly commissioned research examining the passenger experience in stranded train incidents. The report, published in August 2024, called for greater focus on the safety, welfare and customer experience of passengers involved in such incidents.
Specific recommendations to industry included the need to create and implement recovery plans more quickly when stranding incidents happen, particularly where there is no power to a train. There also needs to be greater support for onward journeys after passengers have been evacuated from a train.
Bringing the industry together
We then followed up with an industry event in Birmingham in January 2025, to see how the recommendations were being followed through to create improvements and ensure these are consistently applied.
At that event, over 70 senior leaders from across the rail industry considered how they might collaborate more effectively to ensure that guidance, standards and good practice is developed, shared and implemented more widely to better equip everyone to handle a ‘stranded trains’ situation, with the passenger uppermost in mind.
Delegates included representatives from rail infrastructure providers, train companies, industry bodies, the Department for Transport and British Transport Police.
Industry guidance on this topic is owned jointly by Network Rail and the Rail Delivery Group (RDG). It was updated following the report and version 6 of the guidance was published prior to the event with an effective date of 31 March 2025. The ‘passengers stranded on trains’ maturity model has also been updated by RDG to reflect the changes made to the guidance.
We have now challenged the rail industry to:
review its procedures and to take into account the updated guidance
have train operators and infrastructure managers jointly develop integrated stranded passenger plans following individual assessments against the maturity model, taking into account the updated guidance, lessons learned from past incidents, and priorities identified at the workshop
identify a single point of leadership to drive continuous improvement and shared resources for the industry
develop national and route level strategies for the provision of onward travel and accommodation
use the periodic Network Rail stranded trains incident data in reporting and reviews
Maintaining momentum
It is vital the industry continues to work together to build upon the progress made so far, to ensure passenger safety and welfare is placed at the heart of 'stranded train’ events.
We plan to bring the industry together again in the autumn to review progress and explore how the industry will lead this work into 2026 and beyond. Before that we will be asking Network Rail and train company managing directors what progress has been made against the objectives described above.