Chiro from Meerbeke is stuck with 150 children in Ostend station for an hour and a half due to problem with reservation: “And they have to go to school tomorrow” | Ninove

The youth movement went on a day trip to Ostend on Sunday and had reserved places on the train for both the outward and return journey. “But the reservation already turned out to be incorrect during the outward journey from Denderleeuw,” says Jewel D’Herde. “We had reserved 150 places, but about 50 children still had to make do with a ‘seat’ in the aisle. Although we could at least still take the train and there were also reservation papers on the windows.”

But for the return trip, the train turned out to be full. “There were other youth groups on the platform in Ostend, accounting for a total of about 800 young people. And there was only room for 500 people on the train. We didn’t see any reservation papers this time either. A few groups, including us, had to wait. We then took a train one and a half hours later and it would not arrive in Denderleeuw until after 8 pm. But our kids—six to eighteen year olds—have school on Monday, and it’s been a very long day for them. We had agreed in the morning to take the 7.30 am train and found it quite late to be back in Denderleeuw at 6.30 pm, as initially planned. But the NMBS didn’t give us many options when making the reservation. By the way, we called today (Sunday, ed.)but there was no solution.”

“There was indeed a group of almost 150 people who had to take the train to Denderleeuw at 4.45 pm and that train was full,” confirms NMBS spokesman Bart Crols. “That had nothing to do with overbooking. However, with another group that had taken this train due to a problem with the train they were supposed to take. Someone had illegally pulled the emergency brake on that train. So we ended up with an overcrowded train, at a time of year when many group trips take place. We try to plan them all well. De Chiro can count on our sincere apologies. This was a very unfortunate set of circumstances.”