New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by lunchbox »

^^^^^^^^^^^^^Good point Linto63. As my friend at Transport House used to say..."It's only money".
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

Two good things, the public keep their slime ridden hands off them for now and the vintage V sets get a stay of execution.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by boronia »

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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by GriffinRoads1 »

It seems that most people are happy to just reach an agreement, but then you got ol' mate Turdhope.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by boronia »

New train fleet could be on the tracks within months after NSW government and rail unions talks

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new ... 5amt5.html
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Fleet Lists »

A Telegraph report I just read, states that Tudehope had given in.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by boronia »

Negotiation breakdown threatens to keep new rail fleet in mothballs

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/neg ... 5as9q.html
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Glen »

This link:

https://www.ourrightsourfight.com.au/resources/

includes the following section -

WHY IS THE NEW INTERCITY FLEET UNSAFE?
(explainer for the public)
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by rogf24 »

Cameras can't see things less than 1.1m? Geez, what's wrong with these guys?
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Campbelltown busboy »

The union is complaining because these trains are off the shelf and the South Koreans apparently didn't have any engineering input from NSW Trainlink
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by tonyp »

Campbelltown busboy wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:49 am The union is complaining because these trains are off the shelf and the South Koreans apparently didn't have any engineering input from NSW Trainlink
They're not off the shelf, they're a unique design for Sydney.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

I think they're impressive looks wise. The Vs, without a quality refit, are looking dated. I'll miss the cam noise of the earlier batches.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Transtopic »

The NIF is essentially an upgraded Oscar with improved interior fitout and higher maximum speed of 160km/h. It is designed to operate in 10 car sets in the peak, which is nominally a similar length to an 8 car V set.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

I don't like the way they're obviously being used to guinea pig OMO on the intercity services with the obvious goal to spread it to the suburban network.
The LNP are always trying to do this sort of stuff.
.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by tonyp »

Swift wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:25 am I don't like the way they're obviously being used to guinea pig OMO on the intercity services with the obvious goal to spread it to the suburban network.
The LNP are always trying to do this sort of stuff.
.
It's called trying to drag a 19th century railway into the modern age, but they're going the wrong way about it, or more likely they will never be able to because the union has the system by its throat.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

tonyp wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 7:57 am It's called trying to drag a 19th century railway into the modern age, but they're going the wrong way about it, or more likely they will never be able to because the union has the system by its throat.
Couldn't be motivated more by cost cutting could it, at the expense of safety and people's jobs?
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by tonyp »

Swift wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:38 am
Couldn't be motivated more by cost cutting could it, at the expense of safety and people's jobs?
The system hemorrhages money and it's not a sheltered workshop. I don't think anybody is considering compromising safety. In fact the union wants the monitors removed from the driver's cabs, which suggests that they want to make sure it can never be a DOO train, no matter what improvements are made to stations.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

So does the police service, ambulance, hospitals. It's a vital service as well and it costs. Some people expect it to turn a profit or something! If making a loss is so important, close the system then and convert them to roads. That will be cheaper! The Liberal real estate agents party will never be voted for again though.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by boronia »

tonyp wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 8:08 am
Campbelltown busboy wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:49 am The union is complaining because these trains are off the shelf and the South Koreans apparently didn't have any engineering input from NSW Trainlink
They're not off the shelf, they're a unique design for Sydney.
The result of an uninformed statement by Bruce Baird when the first announcements were made.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Linto63 »

boronia wrote: The result of an uninformed statement by Bruce Baird when the first announcements were made.
While the gestation period has been quite long, not quite the 30 years since Bruce was transport minister. :D
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Merc1107 »

At least from the perspective of an outsider who keeps an eye on the media coverage of this sort of thing, I feel like there's a halfway point that represents the real truth, versus the position taken by Government or the Union. If the platforms are that unsafe, the cameras on the trains so useless, there's clearly a lot of work to do, and in the interim, having staff paying even half an iota of attention at stations could be beneficial to safe operation.

A lot of EAs include clauses about consultation on a major workplace change ... Did that happen prior to the NIF acquisition process, or did the Government hope nobody would notice that they were buying OMO trains?

Lastly, has anyone bothered to come up with a plan to retain the staff in some productive capacity? When Perth electrified in the early 1990s, I understand the concerns about job losses resulted in the creation of the Transit Guard/RPO role. It is almost impossible to travel on a train off-peak and not have a revenue inspection carried out at least once.
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Glen »

Swift wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 12:00 pm So does the police service, ambulance, hospitals. It's a vital service as well and it costs. Some people expect it to turn a profit or something!
Just remember any money unnecessarily spent on operating trains is money not available for "the police service, ambulance, hospitals".
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Swift »

Glen wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:16 pm
Swift wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 12:00 pm So does the police service, ambulance, hospitals. It's a vital service as well and it costs. Some people expect it to turn a profit or something!
Just remember any money unnecessarily spent on operating trains is money not available for "the police service, ambulance, hospitals".
We'll need it when police have to investigate a toddler or midget the camera missed and ambulance have to attend and they need a hospital bed. Why not keep spending that money on prevention?
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by Transtopic »

Merc1107 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 3:00 pm At least from the perspective of an outsider who keeps an eye on the media coverage of this sort of thing, I feel like there's a halfway point that represents the real truth, versus the position taken by Government or the Union. If the platforms are that unsafe, the cameras on the trains so useless, there's clearly a lot of work to do, and in the interim, having staff paying even half an iota of attention at stations could be beneficial to safe operation.

A lot of EAs include clauses about consultation on a major workplace change ... Did that happen prior to the NIF acquisition process, or did the Government hope nobody would notice that they were buying OMO trains?

Lastly, has anyone bothered to come up with a plan to retain the staff in some productive capacity? When Perth electrified in the early 1990s, I understand the concerns about job losses resulted in the creation of the Transit Guard/RPO role. It is almost impossible to travel on a train off-peak and not have a revenue inspection carried out at least once.
There's an interesting ongoing discussion at the moment on Railpage about the perils of Driver Only Operation, relying on video monitoring. It seems to me to be questionable about safety in view of past accidents. Perhaps the union has a point.

"So I did a little digging this evening - just on the UK's RAIB website, for DOO-related station issues and came up with the following list. It's not exhaustive, by any means and there's probably dozen's more that eluded my search. Mostly this is people trapped and dragged in the doors, a couple of instances of the Driver taking power and moving off with the doors open until the TI cut in. The RAIB seems a lot more pro-active in mandating of such reports, as I can't believe Perth, Melbourne & Adelaide don't have similar instances, but their respective state transport investigative agencies seem loathe to make such reports available - if they even do them in the first place...

But if you listen to the Government and @Totoro, DOO Passenger working is perfectly safe! Nothing wrong with it. There's no increased risk to having a Guard and having them responsible for the safe dispatch - computer's can manage the train dispatch process without a problem!

I'll let you judge the veracity of those claims after reading some of these reports....

Passenger trapped in doors and dragged at Wood Street statio...

Train dispatch accident at Elstree & Borehamwood station 7 S...

Passenger trapped in tram doors and dragged at Bury tram sto...

Passenger trapped in train doors and dragged at Bushey stati...

Passenger trapped and dragged at Notting Hill Gate station, ...

Pushchair trapped in tram doors and dragged, Nottingham 15 D...

Dangerous train door incident at Bank station on the Docklan...

Passenger trapped and dragged by a train at Hayes & Harlingt...

Passenger trapped and dragged under a train at West Wickham ...

Passenger trapped in train doors and dragged at Clapham Sout...

Passenger dragged a short distance by a train at Holborn sta...

Passenger trapped in a train door and dragged a short distan...

Accident at Charing Cross station 24 November 2012

Person trapped in a train door and dragged at Jarrow station...

Fatal accident at James Street station, Liverpool 22 October...

Person trapped in doors and pulled along platform at King’s ...

Train departed with doors open, Warren Street, Victoria Line...

Passenger accident at Brentwood station 28 January 2011

Train door incident at Liverpool Street, London on 4 Februar...

Passenger trapped in a closed train door, Tooting Broadway, ...

Incident at Wellesley Road on Croydon Tramlink 15 June 2007

Huntingdon train door incident 15 February 2006"
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Re: New Intercity Fleet Purchases/Observation

Post by tonyp »

Automated railways around the world have been running for over 40 years. Something approaching half of metro systems are now completely crewless, with a high safety record and saving big amounts of operating costs (two recent new metro lines in Paris were estimated to save about 30% of operating costs and Sydney metro is expected to break even when it acquires a critical mass, not requiring a subsidy). There is already one automated tramway in the world and the trend will eventually take off there too. There are already experiments with autonomous buses.

Next step down, trams, trains and buses have operated with a driver only for many years, also with boarding through all doors as fare systems have enabled this. For many years, the only driver aid was mirrors, but these are being superseded by CCTV which now provides excellent vision. In none of these operations, crewless or driver only, have there been a plethora or reports about accidents or casualties. We do hear about occasional casualties on buses, typically on exiting, which makes the ban on entering in some jurisdictions ludicrous as it addresses only the less likely hazard. CCTV virtually eliminates the potential for this hazard. Yet the Railpage mob is determined to whip up a little hysteria about this.

I agree that there are issues with the legacy Sydney system that seem to be basically about the plethora of curved platforms, an issue that doesn't seem to be much of an historical inheritance in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne because those cities are on flat land and, if my memories serve me correctly, their platforms are typically straight or near-straight. Straight platforms on new railways and tramways have become mandatory in Australia during the last couple of decades and for longer in overseas jurisdictions. I believe on the other hand that Brisbane shares Sydney's issues and also has guards on trains.

So as long as this issue exists, there's going to be a problem, one that should in principle be solved by a CCTV system for the driver, but the RTBU doesn't agree with that. However, I'm suspicious of how genuine they are about safety because they want the CCTV system removed altogether from drivers' cabs, thus blinding the driver to anything going on inside or outside the train, which suggests an attempt at permanent featherbedding by ensuring that trains will always need a two person crew, even if some improvements are made in the long term that would enable a driver only. Otherwise, why not just leave the CCTV there and simply switch it off for now? Like any dispute, there are clearly two sides to this.

Your campaign for the Sydney legacy system is not going well Transtopic. This dispute highlights much that is wrong with it and it is starting to look like it is spending more time down than up. Apart from all its other inadequacies, it bleeds money all over the place and any attempts to stem this (like driver-only interurban trains) end up in ruins. I wouldn't hold out too much hope for the proposed ATO rollout either, as the union will also see that as a threat to its members' jobs. Anything that potentially eliminates the need for a driver they won't like.

Maybe eventually you'll see the reason for the political interest in metro rollout - it addresses every issue with the legacy system, including the financial issue, with something better. The legacy system has nothing going for it and the political pain is that it will take decades to get rid of it. Don't dream that a Labor government will be any different. They may be servants of the unions, but they also have to be prudent financial managers because ultimately, if they fail there, they lose government. Also, everybody needs to be grateful that sections of the legacy system are being converted to metro because it relieves the legacy system of pressure points that restrain it from working better. Conversion of the Bankstown line should see the suburban system working much better with the congestion around Central and the City Circle reduced. Overall, completion of the Tallawong-Bankstown and Sydney-Westmead lines should lead to a huge improvement in the suburban operation by taking a big load off it. And the metro lines will be free of the union and any of those safety issues, real or not, that have brought the legacy system to its knees.
Last edited by tonyp on Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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