When I used Victoria every day it happened a lot. Tended to mean a suspect package. A signal to get a move on before they closed off the tube station or cancelled all the trains for a while, both regular occurances.
It got to the evacuate the station messages before someone managed to turn it off. No attempt was made to clear the station.
I was getting a direct train to Worcester which stopped at Oxford due to a bridge strike near Evesham so went via Leamington, Moor Street, Stourbridge and Droitwich Spa.
Yes - he does get about a bit. I've been at both King's Cross St. Pancras and Holborn when the good inspector was on duty. The request for him to come to the control room is automated and delivered by a voice which sounds just like Patrick Allen reading the Protect and Survive public information films, so no need to panic then. On leaving Holborn, the voice shifted to 'This station is closed' and then shortly after 'This station is being evacuated'. :eek:
It is the nationally agreed procedure for most public transport and is triggered automatically when a fire alarm is set off to alert staff without alarming passengers. Hopefully someone will investigate and turn the damn thing off as it does automatically go to the Evacuate stage otherwise. If the alarm is in a critical location, like a control room, it will go straight to Evacuate so if you hear that without the Inspector Sands warning first best get moving!
Back in the days of regular IRA bomb threats there was a similar phrase used to warn of suspect packages but I can't remember what the name used in that one was.
I don't think there was any suggestion that the IRA went into the station affected and played a warning over the PA system with a mysterious code word.
I'd imagine that once a newspaper, police station or whatever had received a bomb threat using a recognised IRA code word, the venue concerned would be informed pretty quickly in order to allow for a speedy evacuation. I doubt an Inspector Sands (or Inspector Pipe & Nails) message would play, I'd imagine it would go straight to an evacuation procedure. Inspector Sands allows the staff to investigate for a false alarm (burnt toast in the staff room etc) before determining if an evacuation is required. If there was a confirmed bomb threat I don't think the station staff would be expected to investigate, that would be down to the bomb squad.
I have always been curious about what words were chosen for the "recognised IRA code words" that you used to hear about, and whether the code word was changed every so often, and who would communicate such a change. Was there a list of words that they went through on a rotation basis? Perhaps we will never know.