Hellish commute home after 24 hours of pain on Sydney’s trains

Commuters faced another horror commute home despite heeding Premier Chris Minns’ advice to leave work early to beat Wednesday’s peak-hour rush, with lengthy delays and overcrowding on services due to stretch into the evening as the network struggled to recover from a power outage.

Platforms were already packed by 4pm at some of Sydney’s busiest stations, including Central and Parramatta, as worn-out commuters hoped – in vain – to miss the worst of the peak-hour rush.

As commuters also battled the rain, Sydney Trains said it expected a normal timetable should return for Thursday’s morning peak.

Sydney’s rail network was still crippled by rolling delays on Wednesday after a power outage on Tuesday afternoon brought trains to a standstill on all lines. Only the T4 Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra line was spared from the outage.

Earlier on Wednesday, the premier announced a fare-free day for trains and the Metro on Monday after conceding the patience of commuters was wearing thin, and they were “demanding answers” after repeated disruptions to the network.

“We know that we have to turn it around, and we’re on a very short leash from the commuters of NSW,” Minns said on Wednesday. He also ordered a snap review of the effectiveness of $90 million in maintenance funding.

Aside from Tuesday’s outage, the system has been plunged into regular delays and hit with cancellations over many months as a bitter industrial battle between the state government and the rail unions made commuters the collateral damage.

In an update at 4pm on Wednesday, Sydney Trains said it was “maintaining a frequent train service across the entire network to ensure everyone can get home this afternoon”.

But it warned that some lines would experience service gaps of between 20 and 30 minutes. Extra customer service attendants would also be “deployed at key locations” after commuters were left clueless about when to expect services on their morning commute.

Marilyn Balois was caught in the train chaos on Wednesday.Credit: Oscar Colman

Platforms at Town Hall, usually one of the city’s busiest stations, were not overly crammed on Wednesday evening but commuters headed for Sydney’s west were told to ignore times on boards as they faced longer than normal waits.

Among those waiting for the train was Marilyn Balois from Blacktown, whose inbound trip to the city took more than two hours on Wednesday morning.

When a train arrived to take her it was packed and she could not get on board. “The whole of Blacktown was trying to get in there,” she said.

She waited for another service but said there were conflicting messages from station staff about where it was going, and confused commuters did not know if they should get on.

“Everyone started standing in the middle of the doors,” she said. “It was very, very confusing because there’s a train over here, and it looked like a cargo train.”

Travel at Town Hall station was flowing smoothly in comparison to the morning peak hour.Credit: Oscar Colman

For Kami Prem, the relatively short commute from Petersham to the city took 50 minutes on Wednesday morning.

“It’s pretty disappointing because it happens almost every two months,” Prem said as he waited at Central for his train home.

On Wednesday afternoon he had been waiting 15 minutes for a train as station staff sought to reassure commuters that a service was coming. Prem could have taken a Metro service but was worried about how long the lines would be.

More than 100 angry commuters at Central station formed a long line to get access to platforms 22 and 23 which had been closed off by station staff to avoid overcrowding.

Passengers were told to expect delays and reduced services on the T1 North Shore and Western Line, T2 Inner West and Leppington Line, T3 Liverpool and Inner West Line, T5 Cumberland Line, T8 Airport and South Line, T9 Northern Line, Central Coast and Newcastle Line, and Blue Mountains Line.

Sydney Trains said regular bus services and Sydney Metro were not affected, and Metro has increased its frequency to every four minutes until the end of peak on Wednesday. Buses will continue to support train services for the remainder of the day, the agency said.

The chaos on the network was caused by a single train which became tangled in overhead wiring at Homebush shortly before 2.30pm on Tuesday.

The fault trapped passengers inside several stranded train carriages for several hours before they were freed.

Crews worked overnight to remove the train from the tracks and complete extensive repairs to the overhead wiring before the power was switched back on and services resumed early on Wednesday.

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