Priscilla was trapped in scorching hot Thalys for 4 hours: ‘It’s like being locked in the sauna’

To celebrate Kyan (11) moving from primary to secondary school this year, his mother Priscilla treated him to a night in Paris. Kyan had the time of his life, but on the way back it all went wrong. Six kilometers outside the station, in the outskirts of Saint-Denis, the train came to a halt, in the midst of the blazing sun. Half an hour later the air conditioning also went out.

Locked up in the sauna

“Everyone was soon soaking wet with sweat,” Priscilla Pelser tells NH Nieuws. Without air conditioning or an open window, the temperature in the car rose above forty degrees, but because the train was between two other tracks, the doors had to remain closed for safety. “It was really like we were locked in the sauna.”

With several hundred other passengers, Priscilla and her son had nowhere to go. “At one point there was just no fresh air left,” Priscilla points out. Out of panic, windows were smashed and chairs pulled out to make things a little more pleasant in the sweltering train.

But the little bit of fresh air didn’t come in time for everyone. Several people became unwell from the heat. Fortunately, there was a retired doctor on the train who could provide medical assistance. “But if something really happened where someone would have had to be taken away. That just couldn’t be done,” recalls Priscilla.

Shortage of staff and protocol

Due to the staff shortage on the Thalys, there was virtually no staff to share water or information. Fortunately Priscilla was in the car with four Dutch boys who took matters into their own hands and divided the available water among the passengers. Children and the elderly first, and what was left after that went to the rest. “They were real heroes,” Priscilla emphasizes. But after an hour all the water in the train was gone. Fortunately, bystanders managed to throw bottles of water through the broken windows.

Thalys’ communication during this hellish evening was very bad, according to Priscilla. “It just seemed like there wasn’t any protocol,” she blames the company. They simply had to ‘be patient’. Solutions with buses or other trains were promised, but not delivered.

At around nine o’clock in the evening, the time when the train normally enters Amsterdam Central Station, the passengers all received an email. ‘Survey: How was your journey with the Thalys?’, the subject read. “You can guess how it was filled in,” laughs Priscilla.

No excuses

After four hours in the sweltering train, the air conditioning finally kicked on again. While Kyan cooled down with his head on the roaring air conditioning, the local fire brigade rescued the hundreds of passengers. They were taken back to Paris station by another train. The end of a hellish evening seemed in sight, but nothing could be further from the truth.

“Because nothing was prepared at the station,” says Priscilla. She was told by a rather disinterested employee that she should book a hotel and get a hundred euros reimbursed. Or they could spend the night in a sleeper train. “But after our experience, nobody wanted to jump on a train right away.” The Thalys left around half past five that evening and after a hellish night of six hours Priscilla and Kyan were in a hotel.

No apologies and compensation from Thalys are yet forthcoming, but Priscilla will now think twice before booking the Thalys again. “My son never wants to take the train again.” The duo is now back at home in Nieuw-Sloten, but they do want to give the company one more piece of advice: “make sure there is a plan, and communicate better.”