Lack of fresh air onboard leads to attack

A train conductor in Henan province said he was beaten by angry passengers after the train he was on was delayed for about eight hours in a rainstorm on Sunday.

Si Quansheng, 42, a conductor on a train that runs between Henan's Zhengzhou and Anhui province's Hefei, fell onto the floor of a railway platform and suffered a head injury after being pushed by passengers in Ningling county, in Henan's Shangqiu city, on Sunday morning.

Four places near the Shangqiu Railway Station were seriously affected by the heavy rain that fell from Saturday night to Sunday morning, leaving more than 10 trains delayed, the Zhengzhou railway bureau said on its Sina micro blog.

Si told China Daily on Monday that the weather had made traveling dangerous and that the train had therefore stopped at a station near Ningling.

"The train stopped at about 3 am on Sunday morning, and we had to open the door of the train to let the passengers get off at about 4 am," he said. "It was too hot in the carriages, where there was no air conditioning at all."

Passengers aboard the train asked the crew to let in some fresh air. But one half of the window panes were fixed in place, allowing them to be only halfway opened. In protest, several passengers began smashing the glass, Si said.

Si said several asked him when the train would restart but he could not give an exact time. His ambiguous answers made the passengers impatient. They surrounded Si, arguing with him and striking him with their fists.

"I was pushed down to the ground by a middle-aged man and my head was hurt after it hit a cement pillar on the platform," Si said.

To prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control, Si said he simply endured the attack without calling the police.

"It's understandable that passengers got angry and impatient after being left in the hot carriage for hours," he said.

The train was scheduled to arrive at the Hefei Railway Station at 6:40 am. It instead got to the city at about 3 pm, said Chen Youhui, director of the publicity department of the Zhengzhou railway bureau. 

Chen said officials from the railway bureau plan to visit the conductor and praise him for being patient with the angry passengers.

A similar case occurred on a train running in the opposite direction on the same day. Passengers on the Hefei-Zhengzhou line smashed windows after they were forced to stop at a station in East China's Anhui province and stay there for hours.

Ren Hongbing, a photographer who was on the Hefei-Zhengzhou train on Sunday, said the temperature on the train became unbearably high.

"Some children started to vomit after the train had been stopped for hours, and lots of men had stripped off their shirts," he said. 

"The doors and windows of the train were locked out of safety concerns."

Ren said the train crew refused to open the windows. 

"The indifference of some crew members infuriated the passengers and many of them started to smash the windows using emergency hammers that were on the train," he said.

Seeing the windows smashed, the crew opened the doors of the train and let the passengers get off, Ren said.

The train arrived in Zhengzhou at about 5:30 pm on Sunday, nine hours behind schedule.

The rainstorm has also delayed at least 13 trains in the East China's Shandong province. Some of their journeys were postponed for more than 14 hours, according to a report from the Jinan-based Life Daily. 

Heavy rains are expected to continue falling on central and northern China, increasing the likelihood of natural disasters such as floods, landslides and mudslides, according to an alert released by the National Meteorological Center at 6 pm on Monday.

To deal with massive train delays, the Beijing West Railway Station has opened three spare waiting rooms to provide resting places for passengers, according to a report by the Legal Mirror.

Passengers whose trains have been delayed can receive full refunds of the money they paid for tickets. By Monday morning, the Beijing West Railway Station had refunded the money spent on 2,000 tickets, the report said.