‘Night of hell’ without heat or light on five stranded trains
Hundreds of passengers trapped overnight due to weather criticise lack of information on situation
TEMPERATURES plunged to below 25F (-4C), there was no heating, no lighting and little information. For the hundreds of passengers trapped on five trains overnight, it was, as one described it, a “night of hell”.
Some hoisted themselves up onto luggage racks in a desperate bid to get some sleep, others huddled under foil blankets while fellow travellers unpacked suitcases and donned as many layers as possible.
There were children and there were pensioners, all of them stranded and all of them frozen to the core. One likened it to being on “some kind of sitcom” while others used social media to send desperate pleas to friends, family and the rail operators begging for help.
Early on, people played music, dancing to Madonna tracks to stay warm, but as the night wore on, the Blitz spirit faded and they became too cold to move. The 15-hour ordeal began when passengers happily boarded the 17.05 South Western Railway service at a snow-covered London Waterloo.
They were bound for Weymouth, Dorset, but as the train approached Christchurch at around 8pm, it broke down, grinding to a halt.
Not far behind, three other services left London one by one, all headed for the south coast and all eventually stranded in a lengthy tailback along the line. The 16.30 service from Cardiff to Bournemouth was also stuck overnight. The conductor rail on the track, from which trains draw power, had frozen, Network Rail said.
The fluctuating electricity soon packed up in the frosty carriages and many were plunged into darkness with no heating. Furious passengers said they were given scant information, few updates and no food or drink. The driver of one of the trains is said to have locked himself in his cabin.
Ally Carmichael, from Bournemouth, said: “There are only so many times you can be told to be patient, particularly after 14 hours on a train. We had two drivers on board, two project managers and a guard, but no one was taking ownership of it. They kept saying they were talking to control, but then didn’t actually tell us what they were saying.”
Robert Luther added: “The toilet pans were full up and we couldn’t get off the train either. It shouldn’t happen
‘lhere are only so many times you can be told to be patient, particularly after 14 hours on a train’
in this day and age. It’s not as if we’ve got three feet of snow on the tracks.”
Eventually, around 8am, a diesel train pulled up on the track to rescue the passengers, who were taken to Bournemouth station. Many who had been headed for Weymouth remained stranded and faced being put up in hotels due to a lack of train services.
Network Rail apologised and said it had worked closely with South Western Railway and the emergency services to try to get to the trains.
Last night there was mutiny on the railways as passengers on a stationary train near Lewisham, south-east London, pressed the emergency button and jumped on to the tracks.
Elsewhere, London Waterloo announced it would close at 8pm yesterday and services on South Western Railway wound down from 6pm.
On the roads, hundreds of motorists were also trapped on the A31 in Hampshire, the A303 in Ilminster and the M62 in Manchester. In Milnrow, Rochdale, an army of volunteers braved the conditions to take hot drinks, food and blankets to those stranded on the M62.
In north Norfolk, where villages were cut off, two farmers helped the Acle Medical Centre deliver medication in their tractors. A paramedic from London Ambulance Service cycled to her blue light emergencies, and in Lincoln, Amy Semper, a mental health ward manager, trudged 16 miles through the snow to support her patients and staff.
The Army was drafted in as two police forces declared “major incidents”. More than 100 personnel from the forces helped get medical staff to patients and rescued those stranded in Lincs, Shrops, Manchester, Devon and Cornwall and Scotland.
Bus driver Charmaine Laurie, 45, who swerved to ensure her doubledecker avoided ploughing into an outof-control car on an icy road in Edinburgh, was hailed a heroine.