The festive spirit of Halloween 2012 turned into a horror when around 200 people got stuck on a tube which was stranded on the central line near Holland Park in London. Passengers were left on board a train in a tunnel for two hours, with no power and water.

The train got stranded when it hit a piece of engineering equipment on the track which in turn damaged the power rail. Another tube was arranged for to rescue the stranded passengers from the broken train. Passengers had to go through the ordeal of climbing through the carriages of the broken tube to get onto the ‘rescue’ train, which then pulled into Holland Park station.

Simona Irish from Ruislip Gardens was stuck on the train while on her way back home from a night out in London Bridge at 5.30 am. She said, “The train just stopped between Holland Park and Shepherds Bush and all the lights went out. We didn’t get told what was happening, they just said they had hit something and the power would not work. What annoyed me was we had no water and nobody told us what was going on. It felt like there was not enough air in the carriage.”

The incident suspended most other trains on the network in the morning peak hours and frustrated commuters had to battle all odds to reach their destinations yesterday. Angry commuters took to Twitter to vent their discomfort, demanding refunds from Transport for London, and saying the service would be better in New York. Twitter user @Eiman266 wrote: “One hour later, I’m stuck on a Circle line train packed like a sardine nowhere NEAR work. I hate #wednesdays, the #centralline, and #tfl”. The incident created a commotion in buses as people crammed in to get to work.

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