Re: City Rail Problems 27/11

[alberta@zip.com.au (Albert Alcoceba)]

In the message about  City Rail Problems 2*****, from NSWSRCA@OZEMAIL.COM.AU to ALL!, NSWSRCA@OZEMAIL.COM.AU said:"

NN> Surprisingly, CityRail has not come out with any major public apology.
NN> Certainly, Martin Place had a small A4 size notice this afternoon, but
NN> most passengers would have missed it.   I would have had p.a.
NN> announcements at the stations in between the train announcements, plus
NN> a full page ad in the main newspapers apologising.   Certainaly,
NN> possibly a bit early for the last mentioned, but Saturday or Monday at
NN> the latest!

Interestingly enough an electrical storm on Friday 19th caused the failure
of traction power out at Engadine.  This happened at around 1600 and I
would estimate the outage to have been around 3 hours long. (others can
correct me on this).

It seems that CityRail did learn from earlier mistakes and as soon as the
problem was known it ceased running trains beyond Hurstville - all trains
were turned back at Hurstville to form UP services.  I large contingent of
buses was found (mainly State Transit Buses from Burwood and Kingsgrove
Depots but quite a mixture of private operators as well) to operate express
buses Hurstville to Sutherland, Hurstville Express to Sutherland then all
stations to Waterfall, and Hurstville all stations to Sutherland.

Trains were running a shuttle service, Sutherland to Cronulla, and I assume
Waterfall to Port Kembla/Dapto.

Delays to passengers were minimal (in the order of 30 - 45 minutes) and
could have been reduced if the bus drivers had known the best access routes
between stations - but you can hardly blame them for that.

Passenger / staff information was again poor.  Redfern was advising that
trains were running through to Sutherland with buses replacing trains
Sutherland to Waterfall, and supplementing Sutherland to Cronulla.

The train I caught at Redfern was announced as being Sydenham, Jannali and
Sutherland but turned out to be all stations to Hurstville.  Hurstville had
no information available as to any train services available in the up
direction with people having no idea which of the four platforms would have
a city train.

I would say that City Rail learned a lot from the earlier problems and
delays were kept to a minimum. However in the area of information being
relayed to stations - possibly some improvement could be made.

The same storm did cause power loses on the Richmond line, with buses
replacing trains Mulgrave to Richmond.  Even though I was travelling from
Parramatta I noticed no major problems.


Regards,

Albert.


 * RM 1.31  * Albert! alberta@zip.com.au http://www.zip.com.au/~alberta/