Connex under scrutiny over fumes on train 

A commuter is comforted at Britomart after fainting. One carriage of the train had been filled with haze. Picture / Richard Robinson

Transport safety investigators are querying a decision by Auckland rail operator Connex to allow passengers back on a train after potentially toxic fumes spread through a carriage.

One woman among hundreds of people who were taken off the city-bound train at Remuera station yesterday morning fainted on the platform, and then another passed out after the passengers were let back on and continued their journey to Britomart.

The second woman was taken to Auckland City Hospital for observation after police and fire and ambulance crews met the train at Britomart just before 9am.

Ambulance officers treated two others at Britomart.

It was after the train left Remuera for Britomart that the second woman fainted, and others said they felt ill from haze and fumes lingering in the train's rear carriage.

Connex blamed an overheated air-conditioning element on the newly-rebuilt carriage, but there was no fire and the company said it allowed passengers to re-board the train only after the fumes cleared.

But the return of the fumes is prompting Land Transport New Zealand to investigate the decision by Connex staff to re-load the train after switching the air-conditioning back on.

"There is a passenger handling issue - people were taken off the train then put back on," Land Transport NZ rail safety manager Glen Summers told the Herald. Connex spokeswoman Tessa Marjoram said staff assumed the problem happened because a passenger had turned the air-conditioning off before the train reached Remuera.

She said they thought they had fixed the problem by turning the unit back on, but the fumes returned at Newmarket.

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission, which limits its activities to incidents with serious safety implications and is still examining a fire on a Connex train in February, has decided to leave the latest mishap to Land Transport NZ and the company to report on.

But a lawyer travelling in the fume-filled carriage, Craig Morice, said serious safety issues arose as he believed the train was severely overcrowded when the fumes started wafting through the carriage.

"It wasn't smoke, it was like a haze, but the fumes were toxic - they smelled like tyres burning."

He said it was not so much the air-conditioning failure that concerned him but a lack of response by train staff.

"I spoke to the conductor and people were saying, 'What's that smell?' but she didn't do anything.

"I told her she should tell the driver there were fumes - but she wouldn't stop the train."

Mr Morice said the fumes started filling the carriage soon after the train left Greenlane station, and he and others began coughing in the several worrying minutes it took to reach Remuera.

He said he was among about 100 passengers allowed to crowd on to the late-running train at Ellerslie, but he believed it was seriously overloaded even after leaving others standing at the platform.

He was concerned schoolchildren on the train were being crushed, even before the fumes scare.

Ms Marjoram said there were never more than 350 people on the train, which had seats for 250 and was allowed to carry double that before reaching "crush load".

"People's idea of crowding is very relative," she said.

But Mr Morice said he had been on trains in Japan and the London Underground and had never before been packed in so tightly.

"There were far more than 350 on that train."

The train was supposed to have left Papakura at 7.03am but it was hit by problems even before collecting its first passengers - a signal fault meant it did not arrive for them until nearly 7.45am.

Frustrated passengers said the new SA train's two carriages filled quickly when it finally turned up, and had to leave people behind at several stations along the way.

One passenger, who would not be named, said she began feeling queasy after the train left Greenlane station and a foggy haze developed.

"It just looked like fog but it had a funny smell," she said.

She said another passenger broke the glass on a fire alarm but train staff tried to tell passengers there was no need to panic. "It scared a lot of people," she said. "There was a baby and she was screaming the whole way."

A Fire Service senior station officer waiting at Britomart, Jeff McCulloch, said the air-conditioning unit in the rear carriage was 12 degrees warmer than in the front of the train. Firefighters remained on board as the train travelled back to the Westfield rail yards for repairs.

The incident follows several problems with the train service this year, including the evacuation of 50 passengers when a fire broke out under the floor of a carriage in February.

"What else can happen?" asked one man. "There was a signal fault the other day. They are plagued by disaster, aren't they?"

Train trouble

February: Passengers flee smoke-filled carriage after fire breaks out under floor just outside Britomart tunnel.
March: Concrete from ceiling of Britomart Station falls on to train roof and bounces on to platform.
May 4 and 11: Several signal failures cause delays and disruption.
May 16: Two passengers faint after a foggy haze and fumes fill carriage.