Article: Up front with driver, it's trouble down the line

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Up front with driver, it's trouble down the line

Up front with driver, it's trouble down the line

January 25, 2009

Delays and cancellations are all part of the service. Reid Sexton sat in with a Connex train driver to see why the network is struggling to stay on track.

WE ARE already one minute late and we haven't even left Flinders Street Station. The driver of this 2.07pm Hurstbridge service can't go anywhere until he helps a wheelchair-bound passenger safely board the train.

It's not a good start. With the city's temperatures soaring and a forecast of extreme wind on the day last week when The Sunday Age rode up front with a Connex driver, further delays are likely.

The driver, who asked not to be identified, is relieved when the train passes through the city loop without incident. Sometimes, he says, people leap onto the tracks to escape ticket inspectors.

But the smooth run doesn't last. Approaching Clifton Hill station, a track worker waves a yellow flag, indicating that the driver needs to slow down in anticipation of a red flag, which marks the location of a maintenance crew. But the red flag isn't immediately visible, so the driver loses a couple more minutes as he is forced to inch the train along the track until he spots the crew.

Elsewhere on Melbourne's ailing rail network, trains are being cancelled, tracks are expanding, faulty air-conditioners are breathing their last, some commuters are fainting, others are blowing their tops.

The good news for patrons waiting on the Hurstbridge line is that the relentless heat and wild winds have not brought their service to a halt.

However, a train running late further along the network ? it has slowed to a crawl after a power surge at Diamond Creek knocked a signal out ? means our driver must hold the train at Eltham, further delaying the train's progress.

When the train finally pulls into Hurstbridge it is seven minutes late. The driver walks to the other end of the train, skips his designated break and sets up ready for the return journey. He has no hope of meeting the scheduled timetable as he is already running several minutes late.

He says all the minor interferences encountered on each trip conspire to make trains run late, but when you add bad weather, the delays are magnified.

The driver says a lack of funding from the State Government ? which finances new trains, tracks and equipment ? causes problems that are then compounded by bad weather, especially heat.

"The system is under-funded," he said. "When it's hot you have other problems like insulation breakdowns ? in a transformer. Substations can fail.

"The relays that help make an electrical current are at least 50 to 60 years old. There's only so much maintenance you can do ? replacing that infrastructure is not any of Connex's responsibility."

The thousands of Melburnians left stranded across town in the past few weeks would almost certainly have blamed Connex's mismanagement and poor communication for their predicaments.

But the driver insists that he and his colleagues are at the mercy of the equipment the Government provides them.

He says recent upgrades to air-conditioning on Comeng trains ? which are about 25 years old and have been the source of dozens of cancellations over the past few weeks ? are like putting "lipstick on a pig". New trains are needed.

The Government's current program of laying down about 108,000 concrete sleepers to replace wooden ones, which will cover about 10 per cent of the network, will go some way to stopping tracks from buckling under heat, he says, but that's not good enough ? all of the wooden sleepers should be replaced.

Our service back to Flinders Street also escapes interference from the weather but nevertheless arrives a few minutes late.

By now, word spreads that the number of cancellations has been creeping up steadily throughout the afternoon. The final number for the day is 54, with a range of reasons given: faulty air-conditioners, a broken public address system and a tree that fell between Eltham and Hurstbridge minutes after we left the area.

The driver's next designated service is the 5.55pm Ringwood trip, but that too is cancelled. No announcement from Connex means staff and commuters waiting on the platform find out about it only when a later service starts showing on the screen.

Eventually, we're on the 6.10pm Belgrave service which, like hundreds of other trains this day, leaves a few minutes late.

Despite the peak-hour crowds, the trip is not delayed much more aside from an extra couple of minutes waiting at Richmond station as commuters and tennis fans pile on.

The boom in rail use is probably the biggest change the driver and his colleagues have had to deal with in recent years. Gone are the days when fewer patrons meant most people could travel in comfort.

"People have higher expectations these days and that's fine. But they probably don't have new cars or air-conditioning ? (yet) they expect the best trains," he says.

"No one is going to pat you on the back and say well done for running a service if the air-conditioning is not working but everyone is all right. But they come looking for you if it goes wrong."