Re: Newcastle realignment (with a Mountains flavour)

["Christopher Downs" <cvdowns@ozemail.com.au>]

Only the Short North and Illawarra rated a mention for realignment in
"Action for Transport 2010".

The report conceded that the west of the state was the domain of road
transport and did not advocate major expenditure on rail infrastructure
between Sydney and the west.

Just as the National Party's expressway through the Blue Mountains won't get
up neither will a major realignment of the railway.  Both would have far too
great an impact on the local environment.

There is not the rail passenger growth to warrant a major realignment of the
line and I suspect that passenger numbers will be (are being?) adversely
affected by the ongoing upgrading of the Great Western Highway to dual
carriageway, 2 lanes each way and almost continuous 80km/h speedlimit.

Rail's best hope (and probably hopelessly uneconomic) would be minor
curvature easing (and that means 90% of the bloody curves, 95% of which need
significant cutting and/or embankment work) and the use of tilt trains.
Significant grade easing isn't an option with some stretches of 1 in 33 in
excess of 1.5km in length - even if you reduce the grade to 1 in 50 you lose
in excess of 15m of height compared with the old alignment and that's
without taking account or reduced distance travelled due to curvature
easing!

As much as I like the V-sets they don't really suit Mountains running.
Other strategies could be applied here.

As a base point they are too slow in accelerating and braking is often
indifferent.  They need to be able to punch up to line speed very quickly
rather than taking the 600m+ some sets do climbing away from stations such
as Woodford.  The service brake on many V-sets trains is indifferent and
drivers frequently cut regen. out to smooth the ride and reduce the
incidence of wheel slide in the wet.

V-sets often suffer horrendously on wet/greasy rails losing many minutes on
the climb from Penrith to Katoomba.  Mixed chopper/camshaft sets are worst.
Primitive wheel slip control is largely to blame.

Dwell times for down trains are excessive as passengers travel close to
where the station exit will be when they alight.  The Chips disgorges 50+
people from the lead door of the lead car at Emu Plains every weekday
afternoon.  It takes a damn long time at single file.  And if the lead door
overshoots the platform..........

Mountains trains also carry a driver and two guards on trains in excess of 4
cars when most stations are unattended (after mid afternoon weekdays and all
day weekends) due to limited sight lines along curved platforms.

Things to be done (my list anyway) to improve the Mountains service without
the need to realign the tracks or purchase new rolling stock:

*    Four car trains only for the Mountains.  This should require no extra
crew when passenger loadings are considered.  This requires a strategy to
deal with Parramatta, Blacktown, Penrith and Emu Plains passengers who use
Mountains (fast) trains.  Also allows drivers a little more latitude in
stopping allowing quicker and more confident station approaches and there is
less train to check for detraining/boarding passengers.

* Don't mix chopper and camshaft cars.  Shouldn't be too difficult if only
four cars sets are used.

* Swap the peak hour all trains are all stations policy for a two tier
service.  All stations Penrith to Springwood and Express Penrith to
Springwood then all to ....  This definitely needs "customer testing" as
trips would be faster for upper Mountains commuters but frequency would be
adversly affected (or do you split 8 car trains at Penrith???)

* Educate passengers about the benefits of spreading throughout the train
regardless of where the exit will be at their station.  Again this should be
easier to achieve with 4 car trains.  If platform dwell times could be
reduced to 20 seconds on average that's several minutes saved on every down
peak hour train.

I'm glad that's out of my system.

Chris

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<> wrote in message
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> Any plans for the Blue Mountain and Southern Highland service?
>
> James
>
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