by Gerard Zwartjes

I boarded the Waikanae-bound train at Wellington station 11:33am on Monday 3 March 2025.

Arriving at Kenepuru station, the train was hit up by two guys dressed head to toe in black with their faces covered and black sunnies on as well, so completely unrecognisable.

They tagged the train on the opposite side of the platform side, so they were standing in the railway tracks.

The conductor was in the process of unlocking the platform doors when he saw what was unfolding, quickly relocked the doors and dashed over to the other side to unlock the wrong doors. I don’t why he did that because within seconds the whole carriage stunk of toxic spray paint fumes as soon as the doors opened, which unnecessarily and irresponsibly exposed all the passengers to the paint fumes (I’m extremely affected by such chemicals and the following day I was still affected), but he also exposed himself to possibly being spray painted as well, as you can see in the photos and in a video I took, that the doors were targeted as well.

After the attackers ran off, he couldn’t get the door that he had opened to close and eventually broke the door mechanism (the red light was on for the rest of trip) before he could unlock the doors on the platform side.

I suggested that he phone 111 but he declined saying that the attackers were long gone.

In my opinion he should not have opened the doors on the side of the railway tracks and he should have called 111. Train conductors, unlike the police force, aren’t trained to deal with potentially dangerous situations and the travelling public don’t need reckless actions from Metlink staff that could have further escalated what was an unpleasant moment into something worse. In my opinion the situation could have been handled a lot better. The conductor’s primary concern in this situation obviously wasn’t about the safety of the passengers, rather it was the tagging of the train.

When we got to the next station, Porirua, the train was parked up there for about 10 minutes while the conductor was on the phone.

Eventually when we got to Plimmerton station, all passengers were told to detrain, and the train returned to Wellington.