About 150 passengers were stranded aboard a train for around 90 minutes on Sunday evening, after a power line came down on the tracks close to Keilor Plains station in St Albans.
Metropolitan Fire Brigade operations commander Steve Watts said the MFB was called to the scene before 6pm, after the fallen power line caused a small grassfire close to the tracks.
He said an external high voltage cable came down across the overhead railway power line, cutting power.
When firefighters arrived at the scene, the power line was arcing and sparking and came into contact with the carriages of a train.
“We were a bit concerned and didn’t want to touch anything, so we had to wait until the power had been isolated so we could start helping people off the train,” Mr Watts said.
He said it was lucky the weather was mild.
“I had them (the firefighters) throw bottles of water to the people on the train and reassure them that they’d be out soon.”
Mr Watts said some of the passengers were probably frustrated by the wait, but the firefighters “didn’t want to take any chances”.
“We just had to keep telling them, ‘don’t touch the train’, ‘stay away from the doorways’. One of the main lines was hanging right across the exit door and there were burn marks on the side of the train.”
He said there were a few loud bangs as the wires arced and sparked, which would have shaken some of the passengers.
Firefighters were finally able to help the passengers disembark at about 7:30pm using ladders, after the power supply was shut off.
Metro advises on its website that, due to an external power supply fault, buses are replacing train services between Sunshine and Sunbury stations.
Metro spokeswoman Pauline O’Connor said she is hopeful the damage will be fixed in time for Monday train services.
“We have crews working to fix the overhead power fault as soon as possible.”
Powercor spokesman Drew Douglas said more than 260 customers in the St Albans area were without power for close to two hours due to the incident.
