Trains =assisted travel

morning peeps. ive got a dumb question thats been bugging me for years. now im hoping that some of you train travel’ers can answer it.
ok here goes. do trains have grab handles? what i mean is, like the ones that are located on buses, when people are getting on and off the bus? there located at the side of door entrance.
p.s i did say it was a dumb question.

i did the same as you amy. i.e googled pictures and couldnt figure it out.

Trouble is, littlestef, I don’t think there is a straightforward answer, as the fragmented privatised British railway system has no uniformity. And if you need grab rails, and can’t rely on them being there, that’s no use really, is it?

On the more general issue, I’ve only ever been on trains using my manual wheelchair, never having been bold enough to trust that they will cope with the electric chair. A friend with MD who’s a more regular train user says that she never takes her electric chair on train journeys, because the access ramps to the trains vary widely in gradient, depending on the train and the platform, and she thinks that some of them are too steep to negotiate safely in an electric chair. So she always uses her manual chair and relies on help to get her up and down the ramps.

@petered wrote:

A friend with MD who’s a more regular train user says that she never takes her electric chair on train journeys, because the access ramps to the trains vary widely in gradient, depending on the train and the platform, and she thinks that some of them are too steep to negotiate safely in an electric chair. So she always uses her manual chair and relies on help to get her up and down the ramps.

They do, but going down backwards is fine and they’ll guide you. Question of how fast you can do a 3 point turn in a small space with people staring at you, forgetting to move out of the way – they learn when you ‘accidentally’ get too close.

@littlestef wrote:

…
petered. the thing is im not actully in a wheelchair. however i am really unsteady on my feet, hence the need for the stick. the reason im asking about the grab handle, is so that if i choose to take a rail journey. i know i can pull myself up the step on and off the train. …

Yes, I had the same issues before I was using a wheelchair. My observation is that some trains have grab rails, but others don’t. So if you need a grab rail to be able to access the train, and you can’t be sure that there’s going to be a grab rail, you don’t know if you’re going to be able to get on the train. On which basis you can’t travel by train at all. I know from my own years of struggling with this how damn annoying the whole situation is.

@kissofdarkness wrote:

They do, but going down backwards is fine and they’ll guide you. Question of how fast you can do a 3 point turn in a small space with people staring at you, forgetting to move out of the way – they learn when you ‘accidentally’ get too close.

I know that what worries my friend about this is not the steering / guidance when using the ramps but the risk of tipping the chair over. Some of those gradients do seem very steep.
With people getting too close, they don’t realise how heavy the chair is until you run over their toes. They don’t tend to get too close after that!

you’ll do for me ruth. novembers birmingham xmas gift fair here i come.

I’ve been on South Eastern to go to london for hospital appointments with someone with me. I’ve done about 8 ish journeys / visits in my elecy chair. Phoned in advance to pre book assistance (basically just a ramp). Had an excellent service apart from the last trip where the train carriage didn’t have wheelchair spaces (but it did have a buggy/seat cut out space) and coming home there was no chair or buggy spaces in the carriage (sitting seats only) so we sat (husband stood) by the doors the whole time (and the ramps were slow to arrive but the station was the end of the line so no train hurrying off). Whilst they have control over the level of assistance – they can’t control which train pulls up. I am lucky that both stations (both ways) is accessible as some of the stops on route are not.