Article: Expert speaks out over rail overhaul

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Expert speaks out over rail overhaul

Expert speaks out over rail overhaul

Matt Peacock, On Saturday 27 August 2011, 7:53 EST

A prominent railway consultant has broken his silence over the poor state of Australia's busiest railway line.

In a move that surprised most rail industry insiders, Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese last week announced a second inquiry within six months into the state of the country's busiest rail line linking Melbourne and Sydney.

The line has been plagued with mud holes, which critics of its operator, the Australian Rail Track Corporation, say have been caused by a bungled billion-dollar re-sleepering program.

Unlike this year's earlier inquiry, which was conducted by the ARTC's own consultant and ended up praising the corporation, this inquiry is the first of its kind to be conducted by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

Its chief commissioner, Martin Dolan, says he is not surprised the ATSB has been asked to investigate.

"We've obviously been aware both of a range of occurrences relating to safe operation on the track and the public concern about safety," he said.

"So we were expecting somewhere along the line we might have to turn our attention to more systemic issues relating to this." The most recent incident on the Main South line occurred a fortnight ago on the outskirts of Melbourne, when the XPT inter-capital passenger express hit a huge mud hole so hard it broke the giant coupling pin on the front engine car, cutting power and forcing passengers to travel to Sydney by bus.

Two weeks before, a packed V-line passenger train narrowly missed a maintenance crew mending rail north of Seymour where the mud hole problem is particularly bad.

Ahead of the inquiry, prominent railway engineering consultant Jim Matijasevic, who was asked to advise the ARTC consortium on the best way to lay the sleepers, has broken his silence.

"I think something needs to be said so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future," he said.

Mr Matijasevic says he was told the ARTC had instructed the re-sleepering consortium that "the object was to get the sleepers in at the cheapest price without consideration of the ramifications".

Re-sleepering is done cheaply by sliding concrete sleepers under the track from the side rather than with a track-laying machine.

Nonetheless, Mr Matijasevic strongly recommended against side insertion, warning prophetically that if it were used, "within a short period major work will be required on the new concrete sleepers and the introduction of new ballast will be needed".

"And the information given to me, it was slightly cheaper to have side insertion, but I advised them in the report that they would have short and long-term problems if they went for side insertion," he said.

'Bandaid solutions' The ARTC and its consultant's report earlier this year claimed side insertion was common practice elsewhere for this work, an assertion Mr Matijasevic rejects.

He has also described the sledding, shoulder cleaning and other techniques now being used to fix the track he describes as "bandaid solutions", saying that to fix it properly could cost up to $500 million.

"Without seeing the extent of it, I can't comment on the full amount, but if you're looking to repair kilometre by kilometre of bad formation with drainage and what have you, and ballast cleaning, you could be looking at $1 million a kilometre," he said.

And the controversial re-sleepering is continuing, with reports already of fresh mud holes appearing on the western line to Broken Hill.

Rail Union president Bob Nanva says the inquiry must look at the root cause of the mud holes, which he blames on the ARTC's controversial re-sleepering process.

"It's unbelievable that it's taken so many high-risk incidents to occur in such close succession for someone to realise the absurdity of the situation and do something about it," he said.

"Particularly when you've had drivers and other independent experts, outside of the union, telling the ARTC that the techniques they are using have problems.

And we're seeing those problems through these mud holes that occur time and time again.

"They will really need to look at the side insertion technique that's been adopted by the ARTC, which we have described often as a cheap and nasty way of doing business.

"We have real concerns that these issues are going to replicate themselves all across Australia, throughout Parkes, Broken Hill, if this investigation doesn't nip the problem in the bud." Mr Dolan's report is not expected within a year.

[SurfRail]

I think we can consider ourselves reasonably lucky that ARTC decided against side-insertion for resleepering the line to Brisbane!

[Gazza]

You dont want to know where I reckon ARTC should insert one of those sleepers....