Cape Town – Dedicated rail traveller John Erasmus says he is concerned about the declining state of passenger train travel in South Africa, following his most recent experience on board the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (PRASA’s) long-distance passenger rail service, Shosholoza Meyl.
On 11 January this year, Traveller24 reported of a horrific experience on the same passenger rail service, in which passengers had to spend 31 hours on a train without water in heatwave.
WATCH: Shosholoza Meyl passengers spend 31 hours on train without water in heatwave
Although Nosipho Mancotywa, Eastern Cape area operations manager for Shosholoza Meyl told Traveller24 at the time that they received no complaint regarding the lack of water on the trains, more passengers have come forward, complaining about the trains.
John Erasmus told Traveller24 he has always been passionate about train travel train and have been using the railway service for over 40 years now, going on over 100 journeys to date.
“There’s no better way to experience the beautiful South African landscape than by train travel.”
“Unfortunately, it’s so sad to see this valuable asset deteriorate to the extent it has. They recently experienced the “worst train trip in over 40 years”.
Delays and service issues on different routes
Erasmus and his family were scheduled to travel from East London to Johannesburg by train on 3 January 2016, the very same day 65-year-old Sandra Nagel and her son also embarked on a Shosholoza Meyl journey, but on a different line.
Evidently, delays and lack of service was experience on both routes.
From Johannesburg, Erasmus and his family were to travel to Cape Town by train, and from there back again to East London, completing journey.
Journeys on every line proved problematic, all being heavily delayed and operating with severe technical issues.
Like Nagel, the Erasmus’ had few working facilities and a trip in a broken carriage.
Apart from lengthy, often unexplained delays of up to 12 hours at a time, Erasmus says all except one toilet from six in the sleeper coaches was in working condition.
On the way back from Cape Town to East London, the Erasmus’ experienced the same technical faults Sandra Nagel described on their journey, on 3 January.
After being delayed in Springfontein for seven hours, they started heading for Queenstown with a new, but faulty locomotive.
“Every few minutes the unit would 'trip' and grind to a halt. It would then take a minute or 2 to start up again but a few minutes later it would happen all over again. The usual four-hour trip from Queenstown to East London took us over six hours.”
Busses, drunken passengers and fear of vigilantism
“When we arrived at the station [in East London for the first leg of the journey] there was no train, but busses waited to take us to Queenstown,” Erasmus says.
“Two of the busses had smooth tires and were certainly not roadworthy. The interior of the busses was also filthy. We felt that it was not safe to use this option so we asked a family member to drive us to Queenstown. We had to pay them R500 for fuel.”
Later on during their journey, while being stranded en route to Cape Town for 12 hours, busses were sent to help out again. The busses arrived at 02:00 in the morning, Erasmus says, “but after the East London bus scenario, and with our two small young kids fast asleep, the thought of sharing a bus with a number of very drunk passengers” wasn’t appealing.
“We decided against this option, which was just as well,” Erasmus says. “We later heard from one of the passengers who took the bus that her bus broke down somewhere in the Karoo and that she and a number of passengers were forced to hitch-hike to Cape Town…”
Because the train was so delayed, Erasmus says they feared passengers would become aggressive.
“At one stage we became very concerned as a number of the sitter-class passengers started threatening to burn the train due to the excessive delays.
Holiday spoilt
What was hoped to be an epic cross-country railroad experience, turned out to be a series of horrible delays, lack of service and a family fearing for their safety.
“I lost a day and a half of my holiday as well as a missed hotel booking that I had to pay for due to the excessive delays,” Erasmus says.
“Because we arrived in Cape Town 25 hours late, we missed one night of our hotel reservation, which cost us R1 850, and a full day of our holiday.”
“Over our three train trips we were delayed by 36 hours, and it cost us over R2 700.”
“We’ve been passionate supporters of long distance passenger rail in SA for many years and this is just not acceptable.
“After chatting to a number of the very helpful Shosholoza Meyl train staff the general consensus is that political bungling and corruption are the main causes of this decline,” Erasmus says.
He says even the train driver agreed with him that it was a lack of proper maintenance causing the excessive technical issues and delays.
“At this stage though I’d suggest we keep the foreign tourists far away from our passenger rail service as it’s a huge embarrassment for SA.”
(Click on the arrow box in the top left hand corner to see a brief overview of the Erasmus' trip.)
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