31 Jan 2018

Disruption lingers after Wellington train outage

7:49 am on 31 January 2018

Commuters in Wellington may face packed trains this morning as services return to normal following an electrical fault that crippled the network yesterday.

Commuters in Wellington wait for buses after a power outage cut most train services out of the region.

Commuters in Wellington wait for buses after a power outage cut most train services out of the region. Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller

Trains were stopped for almost four hours during peak travel time because of the fault that affected overhead wires. Only the diesel-powered Wairarapa service continued running.

Look back on RNZ's live coverage here.

Some buses were brought in to take passengers home but couldn't meet demand and hundreds of commuters were stranded.

Rail operator TransDev is running a regular timetable this morning, but two Taita services will have reduced seating as carriages need repositioning.

It is sending alerts out about other services which will run with fewer carriages.

TransDev is investigating how the faults occurred.