http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-train-nightmare-passengers-stuck-twoandahalf-hours-on-ferny-grove-line/news-story/49a8f06b92f052d474c7f40ee16e3e9c
Honestly this is disgusting.

While its rare for QR to have a suburban spark fail in its tracks, when it does the "brains trust" in QR cannot seem to come to terms with how you deal with the people, nearly 3hrs locked in a train with no power or toilet in inner suburban Brisbane is unbelievable.

I don't buy the whole safety BS at all and yes I work in heavy industry so I know about modern safety issues. There should be two teams working on the problem, one on the issue with the train, the other working to get the people off within 1hr. If the train is fixed before hand, great, but don't wait to find out its going to take too long. Get them off within the hour, a ladder and a few helpers is a good place to start, walk them to an exit from the ROW, have buses and taxies ready to take them home or where ever. Then you have people who have been delayed but at least treated as humans in a modern country and feel they were looked after and you get a good news story, not a horror story on the front page on the paper the next day.

If you cannot get people off the train, then get a bloody toilet onto the train for crying out loud, how hard is it? And lights?

A few weeks ago a similar number of people were stuck in a cable car over the river Rhine in Germany, they people had to be winched 40m down to boats after the rescuer climbed along the cable to the car and they did it in a similar time frame as QR managed. Not the article says they "practiced for just such an event a few weeks before".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/30/passengers-rescued-after-cable-car-gondola-crashes-in-cologne

Looking forward to QR's response on this.

Regards
Shane

I'm genuinely amazed that people didn't start pulling the emergency door releases to start an uncontrolled egress sooner. In London that would have happened inside of the first hour.

The Premier shows how useless she is when she says that no heads will roll over this. If she weren't such a muppet, it would be the perfect chance to demonstrate her authority by handing out some DCMs and cancelling end of year bonuses.

I'm genuinely amazed that people didn't start pulling the emergency door releases to start an uncontrolled egress sooner. In London that would have happened inside of the first hour.

The Premier shows how useless she is when she says that no heads will roll over this. If she weren't such a muppet, it would be the perfect chance to demonstrate her authority by handing out some DCMs and cancelling end of year bonuses.

I agree , I think in a previous discussion someone stated that people leaving the train against QR direction would most likely have the police called and to be honest I think after 2-3hr, I'd be happy with that. I doubt a reasonable cop would arrest people jumping from a train with kids etc and then having a pi$$ on the nearest tree after such a long wait.  Issue is leaving the train these days is that you cannot easily leave the ROW corridor due to fencing, so you could be up for a bit of a walk over uneven ground. You could understand it if there was live wires on the ground.

The problem is QR, while this sort of issue is irregular, when it happens they don't have a clue and its not uncommon for a wait of 2-3 hr, this along with the driver issue that even when it went public they still didn't act for months and noting QR drivers were the last drivers in Australia to call a lightening strike for which I'm fairly confident they would never attempt that stunt again but still sums up where the problem is and the govt is too weak to deal with it. Have to wonder is this legacy in Aurizon is why they are basically walking away from the container business to the new kid on the block after 15 years.

Every-time the posters in Vic call for end of private operators, just point to Brisbane for the "becareful for what you wish for" comments.

Passengers needing to relieve themselves could have at least been escorted to one of the driver's cabs  and been allowed to piddle out of the door.  Easier for men to do I know, but I'm sure people wouldn't care much for niceties under such circumstances.

By the way, the term "rail fail" is very poor grammar.  The correct word is failure.

This has happened to me three or four times in the last ten years, for periods from 1 to 2-3 hours.

I remember one incident in about 2006, when one of the peak hour trains to Robina stopped about 200m out from the Roma St platform. After 3/4 of an hour and no messages from the driver or guard, I rang QR who told me that as a result of the summer rain storm they had an electrical fault. I then started to give them a huge serve for not telling the passengers on the train, the telephone operator was a bit taken aback that anyone would ring and complain me thinks. About twenty minutes later the message obviously got through to the driver to inform the passengers of the issue. By that time the train was very muggy. But we were still left there for about 40 odd more minutes.

So we had a few hundred people on the train, many standing and sitting on the floor, limited toilets, no train operations in either direction, do you think they had the forethought to open the doors and get people back to the platform? No way. QR Cityrail is an absolute CLUSTER F***, with the train crew and platform staff there is no reason why QR could not safely get people of the train and onto the platform where they could wait more comfortably. When the problem is resolved just back the train up and reload.



Hendo