Train trip chaos makes headlines

Complaints are something that national rail service DSB receives fairly often - some justified and others maybe not. But the company probably considers itself unfortunate that one of its biggest blunders of the year was witnessed by a reporter from Berlingske Tidende newspaper.

Last Friday, Line Holm Nielsen happened to be one of the passengers on the 16:56 train from Copenhagen’s central station to Jutland. And by the end of the trip she was more than willing to write down her experience in an article for Berlingske Tidende newspaper.

The train was already working at a disadvantage from the offset, as it was short one of its carriages. According to Nielsen, that meant around 80 passengers who had paid for a seat in the missing carriage had to find seats elsewhere on the train.

Shortly after leaving Odense, Nielsen wrote, there was a loud bang and the 14 carriage train began to slow. It finally stopped about a kilometre outside the city. Little did the passengers know that they would be stranded for nearly three hours in a 35-degree train.

Nielsen reported that several babies were on the train, as well as elderly passengers, one of whom collapsed due to dehydration. Nielsen said the conductor indicated that windows could not be opened for security reasons.

When the train finally got moving again it rolled into the next station, where the passengers were moved to another train.

But while DSB apologised profusely after the incident, it offered no explanation as to why buses were not sent out to retrieve the passengers at some point during the delay.

‘Our normal procedure is that a train may be stopped a maximum of one hour before passengers are evacuated to a bus or another train,’ wrote DSB spokesman Tony Bispeskov in a response to Berlingske Tidende.

Bispeskov said that the final responsibility for the improper handling of the incident lay with the central operations department, which should have passed on the necessary information to both the onboard employees and passengers.

According to DSB rules, all the passengers on the ill-fated train will receive a full refund for their tickets, as the delay was more than two hours.

But Nielsen was far from satisfied with that, adding that the toilets had not been cleaned prior to leaving Copenhagen and were filled with stinking garbage.

‘I walked around with my bladder about to explode. When I finally got on the new train, I went to the bathroom, opened the door and found the toilet had overflowed.’

Nielsen added that she talked to a couple of regular passengers on the 16:56 who said they experienced a similar incident just two weeks earlier.

According to Bispeskov’s response, DSB promised to do ‘everything in its power’ to prevent such an incident from happening again.

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