(The following story by Tabassum Siddiqui appeared on the Toronto Star website on January 30.)
TORONTO — Mary Dawson should have been meeting her boyfriend’s pals. Deborah Sterescu was supposed to be at her mother’s birthday party. But instead, they and hundreds of other travellers were stuck on a train from Friday night to yesterday morning.
What should have been a routine weekend trip turned into a nightmare for 392 VIA Rail passengers Friday night, as riders on two Toronto-bound trains from Montreal and Ottawa endured a nine-hour delay during which they were forced to stay aboard without food, water, or adequate bathroom facilities.
The problems began when the first train, which left Montreal on Friday at 3:40 p.m., stalled near Belleville after encountering mechanical problems.
“They told us, `We’re waiting for a freight train to pass,'” said Dawson, 19, a Queen’s University student en route to Toronto to visit her boyfriend. “An hour later, it was engine problems. Two hours later, they said the compressor was broken. People were definitely starting to freak out by this point.”
The first train sat idle near the train station as the 6:05 p.m. train from Ottawa arrived and its brakes got stuck in the tracks.
“We were going to hook them together so the train from Ottawa was going to pull the train from Toronto, but that train (also) had mechanical problems, and the delay was longer than expected,” said VIA Rail spokesperson Seychelle Harding.
As the delay stretched well into the night, passengers on both trains began to get restless when it became apparent supplies had run out and there was no food, water or toilet paper on board.
“Since they’re short-haul trains, they are not stocked like long-haul trips,” Harding said. “So it’s unfortunate, but it’s not something we could foresee.” She noted that doughnuts were ordered from Tim Hortons.
Paul Sterescu could only listen helplessly from his Thornhill home as daughter Deborah, 20, a McGill University student, sobbed into her cellphone. A diabetic, she luckily had enough insulin with her, but needs regular food and water to maintain her blood sugar, he said.
VIA’s Harding said it would have been unsafe for the passengers to disembark onto the train tracks in the dark.
After engineers hooked both trains together, they finally arrived at Union Station in Toronto at 6:45 a.m. Harding said the cause of the mechanical failure was unknown.
VIA offered the passengers either a full refund or a travel voucher.
Harding said passengers who wish to discuss refunds or file a complaint can call VIA’s customer service line at 1-800-681-2561.