Sydney train chaos after live wire comes down on carriage

Sydney’s peak hour train services have been thrown into chaos after a live overhead wire came down on the roof of a carriage.

The incident happened about 2.30pm near Strathfield station, cutting power and causing widespread delays for tens of thousands of commuters across the network.

Up to 300 passengers were stranded on the train as Sydney Trains works to isolate the 15,000 volt overhead wiring.

Howard Collins, coordinator general of Transport for NSW, said crews needed to shut off the power cable before attempting to remove the passengers from the affected train to the nearest station.

“The power connection device on the train has collided with a number of wires, the overhead wire system,” Howard Collins, coordinator general of Transport for NSW, said.

He said it was too early to say why the incident happened.

“(We’ll find out)...was it the rain, or is it something to do with the overhead wiring system or has there been something else that has got caught up in the overhead wire itself.”

Strathfield in Sydney’s west is a major interchange for multiple routes and the incident is causing cascading delays elsewhere on the network.

Commuters were advised to delay “non-essential travel or consider alternative transport arrangements”.

Transport NSW has urged passengers travelling on the T1, T2, T3, T8, T9 lines, as well as Central Coast & Newcastle Line and Blue Mountains Line, to allow extra travel time, delay their journey, or seek alternative transport options.

It would take some time to figure out the exact cause but the focus was on safely isolating power and getting people home, Mr Collins said.

“It’s difficult to ascertain how long this will take to fully rectify,” he said.

“You can’t sugarcoat it, this is an incident which is causing a lot of disruption to people and I apologise for that happening.”

A commuter told 7NEWS he had been trapped in a train carriage for almost three hours without air conditioning.

“We had a sudden turn or something like that, and then the train stopped all of a sudden and the lights went off — it was not bright as it usually is,” Bishal Dangi said.

“It’s suffocating. All of the people are asked looking for answers.”

But Dangi couldn’t leave the train.

“They said they were going to disembark us,” he said. “OK, at least if you could do that, I could get to work on time. I could take an Uber or something. I have no option. I can’t get off. There’s nowhere to go.”

Significant delays are expected across most of the network.

Buses are running and an agreement has been reached with rideshare operator Uber to avoid surge charging during the incident.

Services on the driverless Sydney Metro are unaffected, Mr Collins said.

— with AAP