[VIC] Major Storm Disruption, Melbourne, 21 Dec 2000

[Tony Lammens <lammens@connexus.net.au>]

Frankly, I'm a tad surprised that I'm starting a thread for this
as I would have thought that 24 hours after, someone else would
have reported this, but anyway ...

Yesterday (Thursday 21 Dec) a severe electrical storm passed-through
Melbourne around 4pm, bringing the temperature down suddenly from
around 38 to about 30 (it later fell to around 24) but dramatically
increasing the humidity to create a Singapore-like environment.

Anyway, enough of the meteorology ...

One result was that a large tree on the north side of the Caulfield 
group tracks between Armadale and Malvern, just west of the 
Malvern Central shopping centre.  The tree fell onto (at least) the
2 northern (Dandenong) line train tracks (the line is quadruplicated 
up to Caulfield). It brought-down the overhead over several hundred
metres also. 

Power supply was apparently severely disrupted over the whole area.
The two remaining tracks were used for the evening peak service, and
service was severely disrupted. I was on the 1711 from Spencer St to
Frankston (which actually left at 1723). Announcements at stations
informed passengers of delays of 15-20 minutes due to the usage of
only two tracks. My express service ended up leaving Caulfield
around 1802 (scheduled around 1730) having travelled at walking
pace from South Yarra onwards - about 10 minutes to get from Sth
Yarra to Hawksburn alone. 

The journey was pretty uneventful then until around Edithvale, when
further storm damage affecting power supply caused further walking-
pace and frequent stopping until before Bonbeach. Power had 
also apparently caused boom gate problems between Mordialloc and
Frankston. The train eventually arrived in Frankston at 1901 (54
minutes late), the journey having taken around 1.75 hours! This
being the Stony-Point connecting service, many passengers had stood
up to Carrum - standing time of around 1.5 hours! Commendably,
the 1812 Stony Point diesel had been delayed. The train then formed
the 1814 Flinders Street service.

Tony.

"I reach high speeds. I especially like driving down a hill directly
at a tree and swerving to one side at the last moment. That's my way
to relax" - Boris Yeltsin

-- 
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 TONY LAMMENS;  Melbourne, Australia;  lammens@connexus.net.au
                http://home.connexus.net.au/~lammens/
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