Barcelona (EFE) (Tarragona) about six hours.
The company has reported this noon that “the crew on board did everything in their power to serve them (the passengers), although given the extraordinary circumstances, they could not do everything they wanted.”
The high-speed train of the Ouigo company was on the Madrid-Barcelona route and broke down yesterday afternoon, which caused it to be stopped inside the Serra Llarga tunnel, near the municipality of Roda de Berà, for around six hours.
A locomotive reached the damaged train in the Serra Llarga tunnel and towed it to the Camp de Tarragona station, where another company convoy was waiting to take the passengers to Barcelona, their final destination, where they arrived at midnight.
Upon arrival at the Barcelona-Sants station, many of the travelers complained about the heat suffered during the hours in which they remained on the train, the lack of information or the shortage of drinks and food offered by the company and that they had to pay.
Ouigo, which has apologized and has stressed that “the safety of its passengers and the traveler experience are two of the main priorities” of the company, has also announced that it will return the charges for drinks made in the train bar during the incident. .
The railway operator explained that the breakdown occurred as a result of a compressor failure “which activates security measures to prevent any error in the proper functioning of the braking system”, responsible for making the convoy stop immediately when a fault is detected. problem.
The company has stated that “this type of incident that entails delays of more than an hour was 0.68% last year and, in absolute terms, four of the total 4,648 commercial trains were cancelled”, a figure that -they have assured – “it is within the acceptable limits for any railway company”.
Because of this breakdown, all the high-speed lines were affected yesterday and their trains suffered delays, since the section of the line where the incident occurred was running on a single track, according to Adif sources.
Ouigo offers low-cost passenger transport services between Barcelona-Sants and Madrid-Puerta de Atocha, with a stop at Zaragoza-Delicias, and this high-speed line began operating after the liberalization of the service.