Re: Wonderful, Customer-Responsive GSR

[Alex Borodin <alex.borodin@qrail.com.au>]

Maurie Daly wrote:

> Having said this though,and having travelled on the Overland many times,I must
> agree that its a dead loss,the cars are too old , and mainly its too slow.
> However the slowness isnt GSRs fault,nor is it anything they can fix.
> I believe that a service run by Countrylink using XPT car sets , even possibly
> only one per day , in the daytime would do better.

Maurie, the XPT car sets are getting pretty ratty themselves. 
I was on the Sydney-Melbourne daylight XPT a couple of weeks ago 
(in the 1st class carriage) and was very alarmed to have a plastic
flouro
light cover fall down on my arm. That's nothing in itself because this 
thing ended up bouncing off my arm (causing no harm to me) and onto the
shin of the elderly lady who was sitting on the other side of the 
aisle to me. It hit her shin with a sharp corner and ended up lifting
a flap of skin from her shin about 3 inches long and two inches wide.
Needless to say she was in great pain, there was blood everywhere and
the train had to stop at the next station for an extra 10 minutes while
the paramedics bandaged her wounds and instructed her to get it stitched
up at Wagga Wagga. 

Now, the train was on a straight section of track, and was only
doing 90kph due to speed restrictions (due to the hot dry conditions.)
There was no noticable vibration, and I just couldn't understand 
how this damn light cover could have come lose except.

When you are sitting in an XPT for 12 hours or more, you also notice
just how uncomfortable those seats are. Sure, they LOOK nice and
space-age, but they're impossible to fall asleep on or stretch out
on. The first class seats are, by the look of it, no different
to the economy class seats and there is no additional service in
1st class to justify the extra cost. XPT's tend to smell pretty bad
inside
after about 4 hours on the track. I have to say that I'm sick of 
smelling cheap buffet roasts, sweaty armpits the stench from
the toilets at the ends of the carriages. 

The airlines, by comparison, address most of these issues. They
have a genuine first class service, different menus for the food
being cycled through, toilets which are very well ventilated,
in-seat service which is included in the price and entertainment
(if desired) to stop you from getting bored witless on the longer
flights.

Sorry, I don't mean to bag the staff of the Countrylink services.
They were very good, but the train just doesn't inspire much 
from me in the way of a desire to travel by rail. About the best
part of that train are the 1) Sleeper cars (though I've not seen
any sleepers on other trains yet) 2) the design of the baggage racks
near the doors, and 3) the automatic doors (great idea, especially 
when carrying food on a rocking, rolling train from the buffet car.)

Rail travel has so much more potential than just about any other
form of transport. It's capable of being MUCH more fuel efficient,
incredibly fast (400kph is normal in Europe), and in terms of 
in-train food/entertainment/comfort, it's not terribly limited by 
space or weight constraints, meaning that it's less expensive to 
develop things like kitchens/food preparation areas for trains, 
video/entertainment systems (heck, you can even put a piano on 
board and have some live entertainment like they do on the 
Queenslander.) because you can use standard equipment in a lot 
of cases.

Any ideas?

-- 
 o Alex Borodin B.Eng(Hons)        o Queensland Rail  
 o Software and Systems Engineer   o Ph: +61-7-3235-2482   
 o Signal and Operational Systems  o Fax:+61-7-3235-2747
"Without love, the personality is broken up into a multiplicity
of fragmentary psychological moments and elemements. Gods love is
what binds the personality together." St Fr Pavel Florensky