"I was also keeping minor track of the social developments and interactions among us strangers caught together. I mused quietly about who were the leaders that were starting to emerge as some of us started forming consensus on a strategy to approach the train driver with suggestions of a next step. I’m no social scientist but it is truly interesting to me, as it is to many people, to observe how we interact, form social structures, organise and communicate. A lot of this was starting to gather pace in the last 15 minutes before we finally made it safely to Sydenham station."

What you say is interesting. My day job is academic and professional publishing, and one of our journals is Groupwork, which covers mostly social groupwork. We recently ran a series of short pieces headed 'flash group' - meaning groups which arose spontaneously from the resources of people involved in a chance encounter. I think what you describe is a perfect example of the flash group, so it's interesting to hear about it. Thank you!