Letter received from Malcolm Kains (used to be STN KO)

["Darren Yates" <dyates@pnc.com.au>]

I hope this is self-explanatory...
Comments?

Darren Yates wrote:
>
> Dear Sir,
>
> Why is it that the SRA will publish timetables for all its suburban trains
> yet when it comes to timetables for its special trains (mostly steam), it
> becomes "copyright material"?
> In an age where the SRA is looking for people to come back to train
travel,
> surely this smacks of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
>
> I hope you will do me the courtesy of a reply on this matter.
> Regards,
> Darren Yates.
Dear Darren,


Sorry for the lateness of this reply but I hope it clears up some
obvious misconceptions you and many other train enthusiasts have about
the rail operating environment in NSW.


The rail industry in NSW has become corporatised and fragmented into
numerous government and non government operators. All of these operators
must negotiate their track access with the Rail Access Corporation (RAC)
which is not part of SRA.



Any operator is entitled to publish its operating timeteble and make it
available to its customers. As you pointed out, SRA publishes its
timetables for the benefit of its customers. Any other operator is quite
entitled to publish its own operating timetebles, for example a steam
operator. SRA does not operate steam trains so for example, if you want
information on steam train operations you will have to approach the
particular operator of those trains.

Quite seperate to all of this is the STN. SRA produces STN's under
contract to RAC. STN's are produced for the purpose of train working,
planning and control and are for use by the operating professionals who
require this information, they are not produced for the benefit of
passengers or train enthusiasts. The point is that STN's are produced
for all of the operators on NSW tracks and are the result of a
contracted access agreement between the operator and the RAC. SRA or RAC
has no business making this information public. It is up to the
particular operator to make this information public if they so choose.

The reason I asked for the STN's to be removed from this particular web
site was not to deny train enthusiasts knowledge of train operations but
to prevent SRA becoming involved in a dispute with RAC or any other
operator because one of our employees illegally published details of
their access agreements.

You might also like to know that posting the STN's on the net was in
breach of numerous guidelines such as commercial, code of conduct and
law. The owner of this site was asked to take the STN's off but he
refused. I can only say that he has done all train enthusiasts a great
deal of harm.

Maybe one day the RAC will make train running information available to
all train enthusiasts on its own web site. But unfortunately, in the
meantime it is still illegal for any of us to publish STN's on the net
or anywhere else.

I hope this answers your question and clears the air. Please feel free
to contact me if you require any further assistance.

Malcolm Kains.


--
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Darren Yates
Technical Editor - I.T. and ICON
Sydney Morning Herald