Here at Queensland Rail, someone did a very bad thing. Somehow, several
empty container wagons, and a few full ones, were directed into a dead end
by persons unknown.
They didn't stop.
They went through what is known as a "sandbox", designed to stop them,
proceeded up then down a hill. And continued on into one of our
interlockings.
Wagons 1 Interlocking 0
The Section Electrician was informed power had been lost at the
interlocking ( Mains and Standby). Upon arrival he jumped out with meter in
hand, only to be wryly told that'd he'd need more than that to get the
system up again.
When I was notified of the incident, I grabbed my trusty camera. I was
notified that the structure was not sound, and that the roof was resting on
our relay racks.
When we arrived, this was the case. One offending wagon had reduced three
walls to rubble. Only one of these was damaged to any extent, only problem
was the main wall removed happened to have our terminals strips attached to
it.
First stroke of luck : Only one of the cables attached to the rack
suffered any damage.
With no shelter, and no power (The supply Trans went under the wagon)
Citytrain Signals Immediately went into recovery mode.Later that evening,
the block working had been reduced by judicicious circiut alterations on
the outlying interfaces, while work was underway on wiring up an box for
temporary auto section working.
Snapshot: Friday Mi
dnight.
BY now the replacement box is about to be installed where the original
relay room once stood. It's raining of course. During the day a Pacesetter
(TM) hut has been delivered to be used as a final replacement for the
interlocking. Plans are drawn up for the final arrangements of racks,
terminals and power. This is done amidst trying to arrange staff for 12
hour shifts for wiring the new SER, Cutting in the temporary Location,
upgrading the signalling. The Citytrain Signals Construction Section and
Maintenance staff begin fitting out the final Hut.
Snapshot Saturday 1730
The replacement box has been installed, with power restored and all track
circuits functional. The automatic section commissioning will proceed on
Sunday with no problems expected, as all temporary circuit modifications
have been installed and checked, awaiting commissioning. The overlap track
from the block section has been reintroduced othe SSI interface for Roma St
has been restored with the return of power, adding further safety
redundancy to the working introduced by the Citytrain Operational
Programming Section.
A new wrinkle had been introduced with the request for the continued
operation of the Car Wash facilities. Apparently the Car wash had been out
of service for maintenance purposes for a fortnight, and was (to my
knowledge) to open this weekend. As the car wash is like a station loop in
the section, normally it would have been excluded from the auto section
working. Luckily for us, our Signal Design section ( Signal and Operational
systems) had included those points in the design, so a potentially nasty
situation was avoided. Some people seemed to feel very strongly about the
car wash, but as I not involved with rollingstock I'm unaware of the safety
hazards involved with dirty trains.
By the close of my day, wiring was about to begin on the final Hut, with
refined designs to the interlocking expected on Monday morning.Electricians
are traipsing upto the points for the Car Wash now and agin to let trains
in and out.
The final Hut is expected to be placed on the opposite side of the tracks
(:-)) next weekend, as far as we can tell at this point.
Citytrain is expecting us to ensure that there will be no delays to
Exhibition traffic, and at the moment I expect none.
Peter dwyer.