Power cuts strands World Cup trains

[John Ashworth]

Power cuts strands SWC trains

2010-06-17 13:02
sport24

Johannesburg - A power outage that crippled commuter trains stranded 2 000 World Cup fans until early Thursday morning after host South Africa's 3-0 defeat by Uruguay, train operators said.

Metrorail trains were forced to switch from electric to steam locomotives because of the power cut, delaying the last two trains by between two and three hours with the last fans only arriving at 03:30, said Tumisang Kgaboesele, head of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa.

"We are very concerned. We have already apologised to our customers," he told AFP.

Metrorail ferried 13 600 people to and from Pretoria's Loftus Versfeld stadium on Wednesday for the Group A match.

The government has urged fans to avoid road congestion by using public transport, which received a R40bn upgrade ahead of the tournament.

South Africa suffered national blackouts in January 2008 that raised alarms about the nation's ageing electricity system.

The 10 World Cup stadiums each have generators to ensure power supplies during matches.

[Steve Appleton]

Well, we all know that the reported steam locomotives metamorphosised into their diesel cousins because nobody could not find the ignition keys for the steam locos!

[Mike Haslam]

"from electric to steam locomotives"

Hmmm. Interesting. I presume they meant Diesel :-)