Re: Melbourne's poor Met service

[Notagunzel <notagunzel@bigfoot.com>]

MarkBau1 wrote:
> BTW, I believe the recent pilotworking on the Sandy line had some sort of
> seperate authority for each track, a driver told me about it late at night
> after too many beers! :-)

The Cremorne Bridge was rehacked over two consecutive weekends recently.

The first weekend saw the Up & Down CL and the Down CT Girders replaced,
and the second saw the other three tracks done.  On the first weekend,
there was Single Line Working over both the CL lines between CFD and
SYA, Pilot working on one, and return Train Authorities on the other. 
At South Yarra, passengers changed to SHM line trains.  On the second
weekend, there was Single Line Working with a Pilotman between Sth Yarra
and Elsternwick (Up Line methinks), and all CFD group trains ran on the
CL's.

All this had the effect of NOT running busses, which must be a plus, but
having only one track between Elsternwick and SYA stuffed up the headway
for the poor SHM pax.  When it was on the CFD lines, at least 2 separate
tracks under SLW meant roughly twice a good headway.

Similar headway fudging to avoid bustitution was used for recent
Federation Square work between Flinders Street and Jolimont.  Trains
from somewhere (Epping or Hurstbridge, I can't remember) terminated at
Clifton Hill, and the other line trains would run in via the loop to
FSS, change ends, back out via the loop, and cross the next inbound
train on the down side of Jolimont.  Halving the service on the Up side
of CHL meant that a service could be maintained using the loop.

Running the railway would be so much better if we got rid of the
customer :o)

BC