RAIL passengers are used to bizarre excuses for delays or overcrowding, but even the longest-suffering commuter will be stunned by the latest reason to be given by South West Trains.

It is having to withdraw a modern fleet from one of its busiest routes because the letters on information screens are 3mm too small to comply with disability regulations.

The digital displays in each carriage, which show the stations that the train will stop at, are supposed to have letters at least 35mm high. The 28 trains in the Juniper fleet, introduced only seven years ago by SWT, have 32mm-high lettering.

The Government’s disability advisers have persuaded ministers that the trains must be mothballed, even though thousands of passengers on the Reading to Waterloo route may have to cram on to shorter trains as a result.

The Disabled Persons’ Transport Advisory Committee argued that the size of the letters could make it difficult for rail users with sight impairments or learning difficulties to distinguish the words.

The committee recommended that SWT’s application for a longer exemption from the regulations be rejected even though the train’s audio system automatically announces each station in advance.

SWT’s existing exemption runs out on July 31 and it had sought to extend it by six months while it introduced a new fleet. The company wrote to the Department for Transport in January expressing concern that, because of teething problems with new trains, it may be left with too few carriages in peak periods if the Junipers were withdrawn in July.

Passengers who normally catch eight-carriage trains might find only four, already crowded, carriages turning up at their station.

John Horncastle, SWT’s mobility and inclusion manager, wrote: “Justifying the withdrawal of these trains on the basis of 3mm shortfall in the letter height on the internal information systems might be difficult, especially as this shortfall would have no discernible impact on journey quality for the majority of passengers.”

SWT said that it would cost £750,000 to install new screens. It was unwilling to pay this to extend the trains’ service by six months before returning them to Porterbrook, the leasing company that owns them.

The Junipers were ordered in 1997, a year before the existing rules on letter size were agreed.

Roger Ford, technical editor of Modern Railways, said: “It is political correctness gone mad and will cause problems for disabled people because they suffer more on overcrowded trains than ordinary passengers.”

But Leonard Cheshire, the disabled charity, welcomed the DfT’s decision, saying that it had been concerned by “the tendency to grant exemptions too lightly”.

Guy Parckar, the charity’s parliamentary officer, said: “Passengers should blame overcrowding on SWT for not carrying out the work they said they were going to. Three millimetres might sound tiny but the rules are there for a reason. Disabled people face great difficulties in accessing the rail network and the regulations must be adhered to if the situation is to improve.”

Porterbrook described the decision as ludicrous. SWT said that it hoped to avoid any shortage of trains by the early introduction of new carriages.

A DfT official said: “We’re in discussions with SWT on the impact of this decision. They have had seven years to deal with the issue.

“However, we are not in the business of unecessarily inconveniencing passengers, and we’re sure a commonsense solution can be reached. If necessary the decision will be reviewed.”

Thunderer, page 24

DISABILITY RULES

• Hundreds of other trains — run by operators such as South Eastern, Chiltern, Thameslink and Northern — fall foul of disability regulations, which were strengthened by the Disability Discrimination Act 2005
  
  
• All trains must comply fully by 2020, when operators will be forced to withdraw up to 1,200 carriages that were built to last until 2030
  
  
• Thousands of seats have been removed from trains to make way for disabled lavatories. But the cubicles will have to be replaced because rules have been tightened to require the user to be able to reach the washbasin while sitting on the lavatory
  
  
• Other trains have door-opening buttons and support handles that are a few millimetres too high

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