Some VIA Rail Trains Are 'Immobilized' Due To The Storm & People Have Been Stuck Since Yesterday

Travel has been quite the nightmare over the past 24 hours due to the extreme weather that hit Canada, causing flight cancellations, dangerous driving conditions and now, train travel.

People have been flooding the internet with their experiences of being stuck on VIA Rail trains, and it's not for just a couple of hours. There have been reports of people being stranded on their trains for over 18 hours, and there is still no sight of hope.

A VIA Rail representative told Narcity, "due to extreme weather conditions, several trains in the Québec City-Windsor corridor were immobilized (55, 59, 69, 669, 79, 48, 54, 68, 668) or cancelled this morning (60, 50, 41, 61, 62, 52 and 40)."

"From power outages to trees on the tracks and even a tree falling on a locomotive, conditions make it impossible to move some of our trains," they added. "Our first priority is the safety of our passengers and, although stopped, our trains are able to keep passengers warm and safe while on board."

"Been stuck on a Via Rail train for 12 hours from Montreal to Toronto with no updates from Via except for the occasional hopeless message. It's okay though, they've given us water and pretzels and won't turn the lights off," a person tweeted 8 hours ago.

They then posted a follow-up stating, "It's going to take us another 10 hours to get this Via Rail train to Toronto if we stop and go at 10km/h the whole way. Currently on hour 14 of this nightmare."

The passenger also added that engineers were meant to arrive to solve the "delay from the fallen tree" and that they hadn't had "food or water in hours."

Others have been using Twitter to find the whereabouts of some of the trains. For example, someone tweeted, "can I have the status of train 69 that left Montreal at 5 pm yesterday please ? Thank you so much," and another answered, "On 69 now, still stopped at the Cobourg station without further announcements."

A concerned parent tweeted, "my daughter is on Train 48 TO-OTT on her 12th hour now stranded outside of Napanee so close to the station but can't get there? She's considering trying to get off the train in the middle of the field-with her cat and suitcases! What is going on?!"

"At 7:30 am they were told it would be one hour to get an engineer on board. That was 3 hours ago," they added.

The VIA Rail spokesperson told Narcity, "Passengers who are travelling on these trains will be provided a full refund."

"Throughout the night, our efforts have been focused on keeping our customers as comfortable as possible in the current circumstances and on bringing them to their final destinations as quickly and as safely as possible while making every effort to find alternative solutions to reach the trains that are immobilized," they added.

Additionally, anyone looking to travel by train today should expect significant delays, and VIA Rail is asking them to check their website before going to their stations.