Re: Late running trains go Express (Hillside)

[cmgord@ecr.mu.oz.au (Christopher_Martin GORDON)]

: 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.

Yes, it was an overinflated air bag.  The reason gievn to me from Hillside
was that the train didn't want to lose time between RWD-BOX When I said
that the following train was 7 minutes later and it couldn't delay this
trains they changed their minds and had no reason for running express
RWD-BOX.  

A quick calculation of the timeing and speeds show that is was
doing an AVERAGE of 45 km/h between RWD and BOX.  I was standing on 
Heatherdale station and the train had no problem powering through the
station at about 55 km/h.  

Hillside also apologised for making no annoucements for that train, if they
had then many of the people whould have caught the previous stopper, which
you would have passed (or is that the one at Hawthorn).

They will get back to me about another train the following day running
express through Heatherdale and Laburnum, which had no problems.

--

Chris Gordon
http://www.ecr.mu.oz.au/~cmgord