Fri 4 November 2005 - Lightning strikes twice
Wednesday night’s trip home wasn’t particularly pleasant, with many trains running late, and lots more cancelled — three in a row for my station, in fact. Lots of waiting around and sardine-like conditions.
But that’s nothing compared to Thursday morning, when storms caused a signal failure at Caulfield knocked out trains completely for about 90 minutes during peak hour.
And it’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. In February there were massive (bigger) disruptions due to storm damage, which was described at the time as a “once in a hundred years”. Apparently not.
With no movement on upgrading signalling system protection (how hard is it to make something lightning-proof, anyway — conductors and surge protection aren’t exactly rocket-science) and back-up systems, and two-thirds of new transport money going on roads, you can bet it’ll keep happening.