Smoking youths throw woman commuter on to train line

This report Smoking youths throw woman commuter on to train line | UK news | guardian.co.uk brought back an incident that I was involved in a little over a year ago: "the woman had asked the youths to stop smoking on the platform, where it is banned. A scuffle started and she was thrown on to the track."
In 'my' incident, I asked a man on a Tyne and Wear Metro Train, between Gateshead and Jarrow, to put out his cigarette and was abused and narrowly missed having the matter come to blows; the guy actually seemed very keen to have a fight. The incident I believe was contributory to me finding going into work by that route quite stressful after that. The worrying thing is the kind of reaction to someone asking someone else to do the right thing: In both cases smoking is unlawful in the areas concerned. I was concerned that no-one else in the carriage seemed at all willing to acknowledge something was occurring. Would they have left me to be beaten up had I not taken steps to avoid physical violence (in essence to back down)? Did this woman attempt to remove the cigarette from the offender? Is that what sparked the incident? Certainly, I tried that, but wasn't willing to go any further.