Re: 20 mins to get from Parliament to Flinders St (the short way!)

["Michael Walker" <walker@hotkey.net.au>]

>Do Met trains have trip mechanisms?  If they do, it is possible that the
rear
>trip mechanism was playing up.  If it were my train I would have cut the
rear
>Safety Apparatus out.
>
Yes they do, the other thing that causes a similar response is when the
doors don't close properly (frequent occurrence). In this case, the driver
gets out and walks down the length of the train to find which door isn't
closed properly, closes it, then can take off. In theory, when SPOT was
introduced, the doors were linked to the emergency brake so if a door was
jammed open, the train couldn't leave the platform. As was shown on TV, the
system is far from perfect with the doors able to be held open between
platforms with no ill effect, but it must work at least some of the time as
I've seen drivers do it and been in carriages where the doors have jammed
open partly and the driver has cleared the obstruction and the train has
gone.