Re: Concord Smash

[Eben Levy <ebenlevy@klever.net.au>]

Stuart Ellis wrote:

>  David wrote:
>
> 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.

Undocumented futures don't you mean? :-}

>
>
> 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.

I have been told that *A* tree on concord west platform has now been cut
back to allow the signals to be view properly,. Apparently it is still
only possible to view the lower aspect from a distance until you get
close enough to look around the tree.

--
Bye for now,
Eben.

http://www.klever.net.au/~ebenlevy/

A cat *WILL* blink when hit by a hammer.