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Total Cityrail stuff up



The Concord West derailment certainly put a spanner in Cityrail's evening peak programme.  Since they had all day to plan for it why was it such a total stuff up?  I arrived at North Sydney Station at 5:15pm to find platform 4 packed (generally a rare occurence).  In the following half hour before I could finally get on a train, 3 Gosford/ Wyong/ Newcastle Interurban trains, 2 all-stations to Gordon and only 1 Hornsby train went through.  All the Interurban trains would have been less than a quarter full while thousands of north shore commuters were left waiting at Wynyard, Town Hall and North Sydney.  One of the Inturban trains was the two car St Mary's - Central Coast service (What a waste of peak hour track space!).  All the suburban trains were packed.  I finally boarded a Gordon service which had some spare standing room only because so many had come in a comparatively short space of time.  At Gordon the next train was followed by another less than quarter full 8 car Interurban which was followed by yet another service terminating at Gordon.  Finally a Hornsby service came and I was able to squeeze on.  This train terminated in platform 1 at Hornsby.   "Customers" for all stations to Berowra trains were told to move from platform 1 to 2.  While hundreds of people were trying to go up and over the stairs to reach platform 2 a Berowra service came in on platform 2 and left!  People were still pouring down the stairs to get on this train and most would be probably 1/2 to 1hr later than normal and yet Cityrail sends the train on its merry way!  The impression given is that Cityrail think they are running a big model train set and seem to have forgotten they are supposed to be providing a service for people.  It was absolutely absurd and rude for Cityrail to be running generally empty Interuban services past thousands of stranded commuters.  The number of Interurban trains running on the north shore should have been rationised.  These trains could have stopped at some stations where their are platform staff that could have assisted the guard with passenge loading. It was also silly to have so many Gordon services in comparison to Hornsby services especially when so many Main North line commuters would have been going to Hornsby to catch Epping shuttle trains.  And these people are charged with transport planning for the Olympics - Ughhhh!!!!!