Sydney - Foreign tourists aboard Australia's famed Indian Pacific said Wednesday that they were locked in their carriages for 13 hours as the luxury train waited for trackwork to finish, just a 10-minute walk from Broken Hill station.

"We're locked inside the train and weren't allowed to leave, with the excuse that we may hurt ourselves if we got out of the train," a New Zealander who only wanted to be known as Stuart told national broadcaster ABC. "I said we're being held hostage, and I was quite angry towards them, and they wouldn't do anything about it."

The transcontinental Indian Pacific bills itself as one of the world's great train journeys, twice weekly runing the 4,352 kilometres between Perth and Sydney.

A British tourist named John warned fellow travellers against top- dollar Australian train trips that could dislocate their itineraries.

"All our holiday plans are wrecked," he said. "We've come all around the bloody world, this was supposed to be one of the trips, you know - some trip this has turned out."

Tony Braxton-Smith, spokesman for Great Southern Railways, couldn't explain why 200 passengers were held aboard a train for 13 hours, when they were only 2 kilometres from the next station.

"This is clearly not the sort of experience we want to deliver," he said. "Never in the Indian Pacific's 34 years of operation has anything like this happened before."

Great Southern promised disgruntled passengers a 50-per-cent reduction on their next Indian Pacific trip. (dpa)