KEY POINTS:
Parents of schoolchildren stranded on Auckland railway platforms after signals faults on Monday are becoming fearful for their safety.
One mother complained yesterday that her two intermediate-school daughters were left for an hour at Henderson Station after being told to get off a train on their way home from Auckland.
She waited in vain for them at their expected destination, a station several kilometres further along the western railway line, before a text message told her to collect them from Henderson.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said she was particularly concerned about their safety as she had been accosted by drunken men at Henderson Station several years ago.
Kingsland resident John Holley said his two children, aged 13 and 15, had to wait more than 2 1/2 hours at Sturges Rd Station for a train that took them only as far east as Henderson - just one stop away.
Although he was able to drive there to collect them at 6.45pm, he was disturbed by what he claimed was misleading information on the regional public transport website about the length of delays to rail services.
"First they said 60 minutes, and then 90 minutes - had I known it would be three hours I would have gone to collect them earlier," he said.
Mr Holley said his children arrived home tired and hungry and with little time for homework, but his main concern was for their safety.
"The whole thing about public transport is that it has to be reliable. It was just very poor," he said.
Although the most serious disruption on Monday did not begin until about 11am, before continuing past 8pm, Mt Albert Grammar School headmaster Dale Burden said many of his students had been made late for classes by train troubles over the past fortnight.
He said the record was held by a girl who took four hours to get to school from Waimauku, and the unreliability of rail services was undermining a school travel plan aimed at discouraging students from driving to classes.
Government rail agency Ontrack has apologised for the delays, but warns of more disruption as it works to duplicate track along the western line in a $600 million upgrade of Auckland's rail network.
"Because parts of the network are old, fragile and prone to faults, [these] will continue to occur until the upgrade is completed," said spokesman Kevin Ramshaw.
Mr Ramshaw said a power cut to signals and level crossings on the western line on Monday afternoon was caused by a contractor who accidentally cut cables while working to duplicate the rail bridge over Titirangi Rd in New Lynn.
An earlier failure to track-changing points at the crucial Newmarket junction of the western and southern lines, which disrupted trains in all directions, remained under investigation.
Although the full duplication project still has at least two more years to run, passengers should receive some months of respite after a 7km section between New Lynn and Henderson is completed sometime between Easter and Queens Birthday weekend in June.
A spokeswoman for rail operator Veolia Transport, Tessa Marjoram, said some trains were limited to performing shuttle services on Monday but several continued west in the afternoon and she could not understand how the young schoolgirls could have been stranded for so long.
