> First what 'formula' does City Rail use in working out how many
>buses to put on to replace trains. By my calculation to replace a 4
>car Tangara with buses (on a seat by seat basis) would require just a
>little over 9 buses. Where I live on the weekend there is a train
>every 10 minutes, which if replaced by buses would mean a bus should
>come roughly every minute. However standing at Rockdale yesterday only
>4 buses arrived (all at once mind you) in the space of about 15
>minutes. Station staff managed to stuff most of the passengers into
>the first 3 buses (to a dangerous overloading point IMO), however I
>was smart enough to not be shoe horned into the first 3 and I got on
>the last bus, which by the time it left had every seat filled, but not
>standees.
Not all the busses stop at all the stations. In fact, the vast
majority of the busses run express from one end to the other, as that
is where the majority of the passengers will be. Usually there is a
20 minute frequency of busses. 4 busses will run express, 2 busses
will run all stations halfway, then express, and another two busses
will run express to halfway then all stations. (Generally) I hold
nothing but contempt for the busses, as the "service" is usually quite
hopeless. Like the time I wanted to go to Como. I caught the train
from Town Hall to Carlton, where I alighted (carrying my new 17"
computer monitor) in time to see the bus leaving 4 minutes early. The
arrogant dickhead from SouthTrans who refused to tell me his name just
said "Bad luck" and sat on his banana chair under the shelter. There
were no seats for any of the passengers to sit on. He refused to get
the standby bus to run to take the 15 passengers who just missed the
connection, so we all were forced to sit and wait for the next bus -
34 minutes later! I rang 131-500 and complained, and the Line Manager
couldn't be bothered returning my call.
> Also another question I have is why the Tangara's that operate out
>of Hornsby much cleaner than those that are out of Mortdale. The
>Mortdale trains are a discrace and are in need of a good clean. Many
>Tangara windows are that filithy that you cannot see out of them (and
>the filth looks like it is in between the outer and inner windows) and
>the outsides are not much better. The Hornsby examples are much much
>better. The outsides are relativly clean and the windows look like
>they are new. So whats the go???
Probably because the trains that go out west have their windows
smashed by vandals more often. There is no way of cleaning the
plastic layer between the two glass layers, so when it goes opaque, it
cannot be cleaned. Mortdale used to have the cleanest trains in
Sydney until all those horrid Punchbowl trains turned up!
David Johnson
trainman@ozemail.com.au
trainman@railpage.org.au
trainman@cia.com.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~trainman/
[{BBS address:trainman@tryst.com.au}]