People waiting on a station in Nyanga Junction
26 April 2016
In the second of a series of short reports, Bernard Chiguvare describes his daily battle to get to work using Metrorail.
Today I woke up at 5:20 am to check the updates on the Metro trains. Just as well: Metro was warning of severe delays on the Central lines.
Passengers were notified to expect delays of 60 minutes or more due to “vandalised signal equipment”. This was going to be another long journey…
I arrived at Nyanga Junction at 06:55. At 07:11h, train 9924 went through the station without stopping. It might have been an express train.
“Any train arriving as from now, I will make sure I push in,” I murmured to myself.
When the next train stopped, at 07:21, I pushed hard to get into the carriage. I didn’t even check which route it was taking. All I wanted was to get to a station where I could get a train to Rondebosch.
The train was going past Mutual Station. At 07:57 it stopped, about 800m from Esplanade. It didn’t start again until 8:13.
We arrived at Cape Town train station at 08:22. Checking on the notice board,I saw there was a train departing to Fish Hoek in a minute. I missed that one, then got the 08:40 to Rondebosch and arrived at work at 08:58.