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.
6 replies on “Lightning strikes twice”
Two in 200 years perhaps… the events just happen to occur in subsequent years… last year event was the only such occurance of the previous 100 years and yesterdays event will be the only one for the next 100 years…
Sounds reasonable? If so, I might have some snake oil you might like to buy… cure all your ills ;)
Surge Protectors to handle 1.21 Jigawatts?
Great Scott!
Considering trains are cancelled or delayed when it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, when there’s bugs/dirt on the tracks affecting signal efficiency (I shit you not – I was told this by staff at both Flinders St and my local station when I complained), when Saturn is in Jupiters house and it’s the cusp of Cancer and there’s a blood ring around the moon, I’d say Daniel is justified in his comments. If it’s not “100 Year Storms/Lightning” then it’s constantly something else.
One would think we would learn something when it comes to upgrading the system after February’s kerfuffle.
Otherwise, definitely pass that snake oil. I need some ills cured.
Perhaps Connex could do with some of that snake oil? Or perhaps Transport Minister Peter Batchelor, he is definitely the slippery sort.
Whatever happened to Ministerial responsibility? Or is it really his bureucrats that are running the show?
Alex
Try living in South Africa. Hardly any trains, certainly not to the suburbs and not to the main business centres!
Standard public transport is the “Taxi”. A mini bus that seats 16 but 18 get squashed in, are in serious danger of falling apart (A spanner for a steering wheel) and are driven by deranged idiots!
I thought they were trying to get rid of conductors.