Re: Late running trains go Express (Hillside)

[Mick Stock <mzs@eastwood.apana.org.au>]

Christopher_Martin GORDON wrote:
> 
> A while ago there was a thread about late running train running express to gain
> time, now that the trains are in private hand the folling train ran express from
> Ringwood to Box Hill (ment to stop all to Box Hill).  It was the 0754 Up from
> Lilydale, and was 3 minutes late arriving at Ringwood, so it ran express through
> The 5 stations to Box Hill, where it arrived early by 2 minutes.
> 
> This is stupid running a train like this during peak hour when the following
> train is 7 minutes later and stops all station to Camberwell.
> 
> Why did this train have to run express, it should have just stopped all stations
> to Box Hill as per normal, it would have made up the lost time running express
> Box Hill - Camberwell - Glenferrie - Richmond.  With the passengers charter what
> can you do about this?

During the last few months, I've seldom seen a train make up lost time
without modified running, and even then probably no more that one or two
mins - this is during both peak and off-peak. I've actually been on
trains that CONTINUED to lose more time, for no apparent reason.

On Monday 13/9, I caught the 7:45 (or was it the 7:54) ex Lilydale, from
East Ringwood (whichever it was, it left E.Ring at about 08:10).  Just
before we got to Ringwood, the driver announced that this train would
run express Ringwood to Box Hill to Camberwell to Richmond, then DIRECT
to FSS (instead of via the loop). He also mentioned that we weren't
going to be moving very fast, and that the modified running was due to
the train being defective, and "for safety reasons"!

NOTE: Most of the stations we did stop at indicated that this was a much
later train (Box Hill had it down as the 8:39 B.H to city, not the 8:17
or 8:26 whatever it really should have been). Camberwell didn't even
bother announcing that the train WASN'T going to stop at Glenferrie (or
anything else for that matter) - luckily for those who wanted to go
there, the driver did announce this before closing the doors....

For the whole trip, we rarely got faster than about 45-50Km/hour, and in
my carriage (#4), it was obvious that something was wrong - the motors
were obviously under a lot of strain. We even had trouble getting up the
uphill climbs at Heatherdale, Mitcham, and Laburnum. I doubt that we
would have made it to town if we made any more stops & had to carry much
more weight. 

To the driver of this train, well done!  At least he kept everyone
informed of the situation, and I think most people on board appreciated
this.

Between Hawthorn and FSS, we were overtaken by the same "local"
all-stops train SEVERAL times!  (BTW, the "local" was less than about
33% full - confirming my suspicion that there are too many all-stops
services between Box Hill & Richmond, while most express services are
usually over-crowded).

At least for those on board, it was better that this train did ran 
instead of being cancelled outright (even with the modified and slow
running), rather than being sardine canned in the following train!  This
isn't the only time I've seen this sort of running, the previous time (a
few months back) was due to very late running. In that case, they were
trying to get things back in sync..... and besides, the train was very
overcrowded due to the late running, so stopping all stations to B.H.
was the last thing we needed.

Mick.