Purpose of Skirts

[Deleted]

Before you all get to excited i'm reffering to the ones on the O,P and R stocks. Apparently after reading Brian Hardy's book on the surface stock one of the reasons this was brought in was as a safety measure. Late arriving passengers would jump onto the step board of the departing train then try and operate the hand operated doors that were fitted at the time to get in as the train accelerated away. Now given that LU stocks have quite quick acceleration, the doors may be sticky and there's a good chance there could be a brick wall at the end of the platform, i can't help thinking this would be a tad dangerous. Interesting piece of trivia i thought.
Darren.

[Deleted]

Now I've never really understood this, although I've heard the explanation before.

If the current A, C and D stocks don't need skirts but still manage to reach the platform, what's changed?

[Chris W]

cabdarren said:

Before you all get to excited i'm reffering to the ones on the O,P and R stocks.

I'm sad enough to have thought of the tube stock immediately as opposed to what women wear

I've heard the same the these stocks too - my only take was that was a bit of psychological trickery in that customers would be less likely to try to put their foot/feet in the way of the closing doors if the 'sharp' edge of the skirts pointed toward them covering the footplate as opposed to away from them exposing the plate....

Anyone else know for certain

[Harsig]

adw said:

Now I've never really understood this, although I've heard the explanation before.

If the current A, C and D stocks don't need skirts but still manage to reach the platform, what's changed?

I've always assumed that this is because something positive needed to be done to discourage the practice of leaping aboard a moving train when stock with air worked doors first became wide spread since it would be impossible to get inside such a train while it was moving. However by the time later stocks were introduced the public had presumably been suitably 'educated' and the skirts were no longer required.

[Deleted]

cjw said:

I've heard the same the these stocks too - my only take was that was a bit of psychological trickery in that customers would be less likely to try to put their foot/feet in the way of the closing doors if the 'sharp' edge of the skirts pointed toward them covering the footplate as opposed to away from them exposing the plate....

Anyone else know for certain

I heard this too, although I can't remember where I heard it. I knew it worked as they certainly scared me when I was watching one arriving. Of course at the time I was less than 10 years old!

[Deleted]

So was the gap between the platform edge and the doorstep less on the O/P/R stocks than on the current A/C/D stocks?