Re: Southern Arurora

[pcc@ocean.com.au (Les Brown)]

"David Proctor" <daproc@spam_this.umpires.com> wrote in aus.rail:

>>The money side is not the problem for most business people, if it were
>>then they would travel up stand-by the night before.
>
>Stand-by is no longer available - and that is also not what my corporate
>clients told me - they were operating to very tight budgets, and were most
>p***ed off that they could not take advantage of cheap airfares.
>
You mean to say that your clients are more concerned with price than
being on-time?

>This is purely because of maintenance (or rather, lack of it) on the
>carriages.

Yes, quite so. This could be just one reason why business people do
not use railways. Lack of maintenance undoubtedly leads to all sorts
of problems which the railways still suffer from.
>
>>Worse still,
>>the train was held up at Albury or Junee or Goulburn or even worse,
>>Liverpool, awaiting some slow freight or some suburban spark stopping
>>all stations, to get off the rails.
>
>Should not happen now with open access - they should bee able to pay extra
>for some priority.
>
Should not? Can the anyone give a guarantee on that? 

>>The service was terrible long before the end.
>
>The reason for THAT is because neither rail system was overly interested in
>running it.

And now that Country Link are running it, they are more interested?
>
>>I confess that I
>>preferred air-travel, even the night before, to getting into Sydney.
>
>I preferred air-travel to what was on offer at the time - but having
>travelled in the UK and Europe on sleeping trains, I would much rather
>travel on PROPERLY MAINTAINED sleeping cars and arriver somewhat earlier
>than the first flight can get me there.

You are 100% correct, but you need to add greater speed and frequency
to the Australian service in order to approach anything like the
standard in Europe. Maintenance is probably the worst problem facing
railways in Australia; compare the maintenance done on the Pilbara
tracks to that done on, say, Melb-Syd and you find that Melb-Syd is
neglected by comparison. How often is the track-grinder run (if at
all) of the SG in Victoria? It's a joke.

Look, I'm not a professional Railway man, and others no doubt could
correct me and I would welcome that, but since I do keep my eyes and
ears wide open, I feel that what I am saying does have some validity.
>
>>And if it meant going around in circles above Mascot for an hour or
>>so, it was still better than the rail experience which was not
>>pleasant.
>
>Again, this is because of the attitude that prevailed at the time, not the
>actual possibilities.

I AGREE with you. But until the "actuals" are realised, running the SA
would be a joke.

Les Brown