Manchester student collapsed three times on overcrowded Northern train

A student from University of Manchester told BBC News that she collapsed three times while travelling on a severely overcrowded Northern Rail service.

Issy Austin, 20, regularly catches the service from her hometown in Glossop, Derbyshire to attend university in Manchester. She travelled on the 07:52 service to Manchester Piccadilly on November 5th, and says she fainted multiple times due to overheating on board.

Ms Austin told BBC News that the carriage was carrying an “insane amount of people.” She was unaware that the previous service had been cancelled that morning, leading to a build up of passengers.

She said that “towards the end of my journey, I collapsed and I didn’t collapse once, it was three times, and I was in and out of consciousness.” Not long after she collapsed, a unnamed male passenger on the same service also lost consciousness. 

Police and ambulance services escorted Ms Austin off the train, who says they too believed the incident to be most likely as a result of overcrowding. Following this, she was left with bruising and claimed to have felt unwell for the rest of the week. Although she has no other option to travel to her university lectures, she told BBC News that the experience has now left her afraid to use the rail service.

The Labour MP for High Peak, Jon Pearce, suggested a reduction in service frequency may have had an impact on customer conditions aboard local trains. Pearce spoke to BBC News about Ms Austin’s experience, stating of the local line:  “we used to have three trains an hour; that’s gone down to two.”

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“When you then start cancelling intermittently every other train it stops people getting to work, university and college on time.

“It’s having a massive impact on people’s lives and I’m hearing stories of people losing jobs.

“We treat cattle better when we transport them. It’s pretty shocking and it can’t carry on, we need a reliable train service.”

Northern Rail have apologised for the situation, stating that they take passenger safety seriously. In their response, they stated that they “understand that the conditions onboard caused significant distress to the point of medical issues, and this is simply not acceptable.”

They concluded: “Rest assured, [this] feedback has been noted and will be shared to address concerns and allocate additional resources where needed.”

Featured image via Northern Rail.

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