Sydney commuters suffer as Sydney Trains hits its third major rail fail in nine days
A CRACK in a 1.5 metre section of railway gauge in a CBD tunnel paralysed Sydney’s bustling train network yesterday in the system’s third major rail fail in just nine days. But had it not been detected and fixed, a catastrophic derailment was likely.
NSW
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A CRACK in a 1.5 metre section of railway gauge in a CBD tunnel paralysed Sydney’s bustling train network yesterday in the system’s third major rail fail in just nine days.
But authorities warned that, had it gone undetected and untreated, the structural split could have led to a catastrophic derailment.
Thousands of commuters were hit by disruptions with 11 services cancelled and another 124 delayed across the city during the morning peak as rail crews scrambled to replace the 1.5-tonne section of steel track in the tunnel.
An ultra-sonic camera on a “Speno testing train” detected the cracks about 3am between Town Hall and Wynyard stations and the section of rail gauge was replaced by just after 8am.
Delays spread across the system with trains terminating at Central and forcing passengers on to other lines, while other City Circle trains were forced to operate in only one section.
The T2 Inner West and Leppington line, T3 Bankstown line and T8 Airport and South line services were all stricken with the knock-on delays all morning, while only the Illawarra Line was spared the chaos.
The third meltdown in nine days sparked mounting anger, with Opposition Leader Luke Foley calling for Transport Minister Andrew Constance to be sacked.
However, Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned that if the cracks had not been picked up, “it could have had tragic consequences” and said the government was spending “billions” fixing up the ageing network.
“There’s no excuse for when situations like this morning and the previous weekend occurred,” she said.
“They let people down and I don’t like to see that.
“Would I prefer they are not picked up in peak hour — of course,” she said. “I want the travelling public to know we are moving heaven and earth to prevent these incidents from occurring.”
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Constance said Sydney could have woken up to a major derailment in a tunnel with a “fully laden train” in morning peak if it had been left unfixed.
“We got half a million people into the city this morning with a major incident in the City Circle. We put customer safety first,” he said.
He said there was now twice the number of rail safety inspections under the regime of Sydney Trains chief executive Howard Collins than previously.
Mr Collins said the reasons for the crack were being investigated, but the line was more than 20 years old, with about “400 tonnes going around there every three or four minutes” and age or cold weather could have caused it.
“Cracked rails are quite rare — this one is very rare,” he said.
“We’re doing more testing and therefore we found this before it caused a major issue.
“I think people have got to understand we’re using this rail intensively.
“We’re doing open-heart surgery while running a marathon here.”
That was cold comfort to commuters such as Gilbert Rehling, who tweeted that people would be better off “if the trains were going backwards!”
“They would get there faster. 35 minute trip takes nearly 1 hour today! Bloody hopeless.”
@TrainsInfo you would be better off if the trains 🚂 were going backwards! They would get there faster. 35 minute trip takes nearly 1 hour today! Bloody hopeless 😩 #sydneytraindisaster #sydneytraintimetable #sydneytrains #tomorrowsdisaster
— Gilbert Rehling (@gilbert_rehling) August 26, 2018
Karen Png said it took her three trains to get from St Peters to Wynyard — a 7.2km trip by car.
“You guys really need to up your game,” she posted on social media to Sydney Trains.
WOW it’s taken me 3 trains to get from St Peters to Wynyard today. You guys really need to up your game 🤦ðŸ»â€â™€ï¸ #sydneytrains
— Hi, I'm Karen (@karen__png) August 27, 2018
Hanan Dawood said her Leppington train reached Central 25 minutes late but she was none the wiser because there was “no announcement on the train … shame on you train guard”.
Melissa Gunnsmith tweeted that it took her 45 minutes to complete a 15-minute trip to Circular Quay.
“Thousands of us dumped at Redfern — that’s not Monday fun!”
The train chaos came just two days after repairs to signal equipment at Redfern impacted services on Saturday and nine days after a stray balloon hit overhead wiring at Wynyard, sparking IT failures that took the entire train network offline.
Mr Foley said the state deserved a new transport minister.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Here we are in the eighth year of this government and the train service has never been worse. This just rolls on and on and on.”
“The state needs a new transport minister and new policies. A new minister who will reverse the cuts to frontline services.”
A new timetable introduced late last year increased the number of services for Sydney commuters, but critics have argued it lacks enough flexibility to cope with incidents on the network.
But Mr Constance rejected claims the delays were caused by the new timetable, saying the incidents that had caused the weekend delays were unrelated.
He said the government was working hard to “detangle” the 150-year-old network system so incidents were isolated.
Five years ago there was 306 million passenger trips on railway network, today over 400 million, Mr Constance said.
“It’s increased by 30 per cent in five years. We had no option but to put more trains on tracks and change the timetables.”