12:59pm Tuesday 17th April 2012
By David Hardiman
A pensioner who fell down a “dangerous” gap between a train and platform at Edmonton Green Station is suing a rail authority.
Joyce Bell, 82, of Exeter Road, Edmonton, slipped down between the carriage and the platform up to her shoulders in wintry conditions on January 20 last year.
After failing to reach a settlement with Network Rail over the incident, she is taking the firm to court in a bid to win compensation for the distress it caused her.
She said: “I was going up onto the train and there’s not only a big gap, but the train is so high up from the platform it’s a real struggle to get on.
“I went right down in the hole up to my shoulders and got trapped, it was terrifying. It was only because a gentleman on the train saw me and dragged me up that I got out.”
Mrs Bell’s legal bid comes weeks after commuters using Winchmore Hill Station complained that an 18-inch gap between the train and platform was making train travel very difficult for parents with buggies and elderly or disabled passengers.
Network Rail told the Enfield Independent last month that work had been carried out on the line to allow taller and wider freight trains to get into central London, but that the gaps were still within “acceptable limits”.
But Mrs Bell believes passenger safety should come first and says staff at the station had admitted to her that they had received a number of complaints about the problem.
She added: “It’s dangerous and thankfully I wasn’t seriously injured, but it’s only a matter of time until someone is.”
The Enfield Independent is waiting for a comment from Network Rail.
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