I see that all has gone quiet with anything to do with the Concord
derailment from City Rail. They must be as guilty as sin. Talk about
incompetence. I have heard from a reliable source within City Rail
that the
guard of the derailed train called in with his mobile phone to report
the
incident but they didn't take it seriously initially and in fact
their
response was to dispatch a relief crew out to the site. I have two
questions
of City Rail....
1/ What on earth were a relief crew going to achieve with a massively
derailed train?
2/ If it wasn't for the guard's mobile phone what mechanism is there
for a
train crew to report and accident back to the train control ppl
if there are
no members of the public about?
The Cityrail train radio, but in this case It wouldn't have worked for obvious reasons. This is the multi million dollar system installed over the last few years that is still not quite working properly. But they are slowly getting the bugs out of the system.
It is sad to hear that the driver of the train may never walk again
( Apparently City Rail had recently introduced the trains going
down that
relief track again and I take it that the driver didn't know what
was ahead.
From my sources, A trial was undertaken the morning the line was reopened.
The signaling system was set up to enable the same indications to be displayed.
The same empty car movement was used and had several engineers up front
looking at signal aspects etc. They also took a video of all this.
Yes the up relief line had only been reopened just before easter and
was used to store trains as backup trains for the royal easter show.I am
not sure how many trains were stored for the royal easter show, or how
often it was used during this period. Since the formation of the Rail Access
Corporation, all aspects in regards to placing out of use of sidings or
putting them back into service is now handled by RAC, not Cityrail.
From the rumours I have been hearing, the belief
among most of the drivers is that quite a few were not aware of the up
relief being reopened, and the investigation that took place revealed no
problems with the signaling aspects, and they believe the driver was under
the presumption he was following another train.
Stuart Ellis