Long delays for Brisbane train commuters during Wednesday night's peak hour were caused after a back-up system kicked in, but there was no alert to engineers to fix the problem.
It meant the back-up batteries simply ran out.
Acting Transport Minister Steven Miles said the word "disappointing" or "disappointed" seven times in about six minutes while addressing reporters about the failures.
About 20 to 25 trains lost communication with the Queensland Rail control centre after a loss of power at QR's radio tower site at Mount Coot-tha, leading to lengthy delays.
Dr Miles said QR had apologised and would refund commuters who tapped on after 5pm.
"The fault was identified within roughly an hour and was rectified within about 10 minutes after that but clearly this is very disappointing for anyone who was trying to get home last night," Dr Miles said.
"It was identified and rectified within a reasonable amount of time but obviously with it coming on the back of the series of concerns about Queensland Rail, Queenslanders have a right to be concerned."
QR has been plagued with issues for months, including a driver shortage, cancellations and other problems identified in the Strachan inquiry.
Dr Miles said the fault was difficult to predict or anticipate and a similar situation had not occurred in decades.
"The redundancy [in the system] that kicked in did support the system for a period of time but it appears that there wasn't an alarm system to alert engineers that the redundancy was in place," he said.
"So once the redundancy battery could no longer support the system, once it went flat, effectively, there was no system in place to alert engineers that they needed to get back out there and rectify the original electrical fault."
Dr Miles said he spoke with QR chief executive officer Nick Easy, who assured him the issue that led to the fault would be fixed so it did not happen again.
QR engineers were set to work on the system on Thursday to ensure an alert system was installed.
Dr Miles said the train network was running efficiently with no cancellations on Thursday morning.
"[It] indicates that Queensland Rail is getting better at recovering from situations like this," he said.
"[But] this isn't good enough, this is a very disappointing outcome. It's not what we want to see."
QR will review the meltdown and how information was communicated to the public.
Opposition Transport spokesman Andrew Powell said commuters should not have to put up with the continued QR issues.
"How many investigations does Queensland Rail really need?" Mr Powell asked.
"Commuters want more - they want to know that when they turn up at the station, the train will turn up on time."
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