Outraged Passengers Abduct Bulgarian Train

Bulgaria's State Railway Holding BDZ is in dire straits over staggering debt and obsolete equipment. File photo

Outraged passengers have hijacked an express train of Bulgaria's embattled State Railway Company, BDZ.

The incident happened on September 6, but BDZ never made it public, the Bulgarian Klassa (Class) daily writes Monday, citing railroad employees, who have posted the information on their professional site bgrail.eu.

It happened after passengers from the local train 20223 servicing the line between the capital Sofia and the northwestern town of Mezdra were forced to get out at the Iliyantsi station after the latest failure of the train, which happened one time too many.

The angry mob blocked the railroad, bringing express train 2641 from Sofia to the central town of Gorna Oryahovitsa to a halt. The outraged BDZ customers then got on the express train and forced the crew to head to Mezdra and stop on every station in-between.

The video from the "cowboy action" has been uploaded online and can be seen HERE.

The old electric train engines from the 33 series, as the one which broke on September 6, were stopped from running with a decree in 2009 of the then Head of the Executive Agency Railway Infrastructure after the eruption of a life-threatening fire on one of them.

Despite the decree, BDZ is still using them, placing the lives of passengers in danger, Klassa writes, pointing out that the latest serious incident has occurred at the end of January when the brakes of one of these engines failed and 18 passengers "flew" inside the train for over 50 kilometers.

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