Passengers ‘crammed in like sardines’ on rugby-day trains

TRAIN passengers described being “crammed like sardines” on services into Cardiff ahead of the weekend’s Wales v New Zealand rugby match.

Pictures shared on Twitter showed passengers standing in the aisles with no social distancing and many not wearing masks as tens of thousands of fans headed to the capital.

Saturday’s match was the first sellout event at the Principality Stadium since before the Covid pandemic.

Transport for Wales warned that social distancing would be impossible on rail services before and after the game and urged customers to take this into account before travelling.

The rail company also said it would be running a full timetable “with additional capacity on our busiest trains and all available carriages will be in service”.

However, passengers have been quick to criticise how busy the services were. Journalist Helen

Clifton tweeted: “The 13.04 train from Bangor to Cardiff is far too packed, now late, people have missed their connections, why can’t you just put on more and bigger trains @tfwrail? We pay enough and people still squeezing on @transport_wales.”

Sharing a video of a packed carriage, Leila Al-Badawi said: “Crammed like sardines – train from Milford Haven to Cardiff for a super spreader event. @tfwrail the rugby had been planned for 6 weeks. This is shocking – West Wales has the highest infection rate in the UK.”

A Transport for Wales spokesperson responded to some of the tweets, saying: “We are running all trains that fit on the network they operate until our new stock arrives.

“Normally, this is sufficient capacity, but the international game has increased customer numbers by tens of thousands of people. We use all units that are available to us.”