EARLY morning train passengers were forced to sit and wait after the Melbourne-bound service was delayed by close to 90 minutes on Monday due to a power outage.
Regional rail operator, V/Line apologised to passengers, saying it had prepared for the outage and had back-up power available at Woodend.
However, a back-up generator providing supplementary power to the signals failed temporarily, which meant trains were ordered to slow for safety reasons.
Two services experienced “unacceptable” delays of more than 60 minutes and there were flow-on impacts to other services.
The fault was rectified and services resumed to normal running.
“We apologise to Bendigo and Swan Hill passengers who were delayed due to a power outage affecting signals in the Woodend area on Monday,” a V/Line spokesperson said in a statement to The Guardian.
“While the fault was rectified quickly, there were flow-on delays and cancellations to some services throughout the day.”
The spokesperson said passengers who were delayed more than an hour were encouraged to contact V/Line to seek compensation.
For more information, people can call 1800 800 007 or visit vline.com.au.
It comes as V/Line performance figures showed the Swan Hill line was the highest performing on the regional network with 91.3 per cent on-time performance for July.
V/Line chief executive officer James Pinder said there was a lot of work going on to improve performance.
“While it is really pleasing that we’re seeing consistent improvements in punctuality on the Bendigo line, we acknowledge more needs to be done,” he said.
“We’re looking at a range of measures to make improvements to our performance because we know this is important to our passengers.”
