Tempers fray as trains grind to a halt

Commuters were stuck in trains for more than an hour during yesterday's power cut.

Trains queued up as Auckland's railway network stopped about 8.30am yesterday.

While most commuters barely sighed during the delay, the wait was a bit too much for Nicky Pash, a 22-year-old AUT student.

"I'm pissed off, frustrated and I just want to get out of this train - I have a statistics exam this morning," she said.

Miss Pash later received a text from a friend who told her the exam had been postponed because of the power cuts.

South African Rudi Louw, who has been working as a tour guide in Auckland for Fullers for two years, was not too bothered that he could be a couple of hours late to work: "My boss catches the train to work too so he's probably late as well."

Chris White, general manager of Veolia Transport Auckland, said alternative transport was provided briefly - but canned once it was known central city traffic lights were also affected by the outage.

He said train services were still functioning in the morning, "albeit very slowly", as staff were deployed to key locations on the rail network to organise traffic.

"There are quite strict protocols we have to follow when these things happen and you need to get verbal permission from operators at each point to allow movement," he said.

"Our priority was to get the customers caught out to Britomart and then start to operate a skeleton service," he said.

Mr White said on a normal business day more than 4000 passengers would pass through Britomart station between 7am and 9am. He estimated between 1000 to 1500 commuters were affected by the outage.

He said Veolia and the state-owned Ontrack, which manages New Zealand's railway infrastructure, had recently held workshops which involved exercises for critical system failures.

"We had strategies put in place and are as prepared as we can be, but we're still a far cry from a fully functioning railway service."

Mr White said fumes from the trains' diesel engines were a concern. When the power went off, Britomart station's extractor fans shut down and closing the station was considered.

However, allowing only one train to enter the station at a time combined with the blustery conditions meant there was adequate ventilation.

Passengers were marshalled from the trains at the station in near-darkness by staff with torches.

Mr White said services were running again "in a substantial fashion" by 1pm as power was restored in central Auckland. There were, however, minor delays on the south and western lines because of trees that had fallen on to the tracks.