Re: Metcard (sorry)

["Peregrin Took" <Jherek@bigpond.com>]

MarkBau1 wrote in message
<1998081404581300.AAA24631@ladder01.news.aol.com>...
><<<<<<<Where Melbourne went wrong was re-inventing the wheel rather than
buying


>David, I think you hit the nail well and truly on the head with your
statement.
>Sadly the poor excuses for Engineers at Collins St have a history of trying
to
>reinvent the wheel in order to justify their jobs.

I'm not entirely sure that its the fault of PTC Engineers, the technology is
provided by
the One link consortium and i doubt that the specifications were provided by
the PTC's
engineering staff.

>They thought they could do better than Farr so they reinvented the exhausts
on
>our early diesels only to be threatened with a copyright infringement. They
>created the greatest mess inventing their own radio systems and a bit later
>their own crazy safeworking systems. The really hilarious part was when
they
>thought they could market the mess called ASW or whatever its called now to
>other railways when the PTC couldn't even get it to work properly
themselves.

>It really is a good example of why this sort of work should be contracted
out
>to companies that sign contracts and don't get paid until things work
properly.

I'd suggest you read up on why the delay in introducing the MetCard system
The failure of the one link consortium to deliver on time and in a working
condition is interesting reading.

>Phil Dunn (a loco maintenence Engineer) is even on record as having said
that
>there is "no way you could ever aircondition T's, X's C's etc"!
>
>Fact is that very few VR/PTC "Engineers" could get a job outside of the
>sheltered workshop in the real world!

MMMM considering the Engineering Services Group has been (or is being)
sold to Sinclair Knight Murz, we'll see.

Just a reminder to everyone, the PTC has limited control over Metcard, One
Link owns maintains and is responsible for the revenue collected from the
machines.

>Mark.
>
>
>Visit my train pic website at:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~markbau/