Re: NSW State Rail...a nightmare that is getting worse

["David Lord" <trainman@fastlink.com.au>]

State Rail was always going to get itself into a mess just before the
Olympics.  The policy of moving maintenance money away from away from
essential services has backfired and will continue to backfire.

I believe that all State Rail maintenance has to be quoted before work can
commence, therefore, some defects have to await the results of quotes until
work can be awarded and then carried out.  This makes the system basically
unsafe.  Where before, breakdown staff would just fix it, the job has to be
quoted and more than one quote has to be assessed.  Usually, the State Rail
guys get the job anyway, but there is a long time lag before the work is
done.

The big boys in the offices (Taj Mahal) really have little idea of what
makes a system go round, accounting, maybe, but their methods are
ineffective.  The Government meddles and barks with no effect.  Carl Scully
says what he is told to say because he knows no different.

I remember after a Blue Mountains 46 class ran into the back of a passenger
train, the Minister of the day assured the public it could not happen in the
city rail network because of the automatic signal trips throughout the metro
area.  What nobody told the Minister was that 46 class and other Diesel's
were not fitted with the trip mechanism, so it could happen, in effect, he
misled the public because he knew no different.

Now after the Glenbrook / Indian Pacific Disaster, the trip system is to be
extended throughout the Extended metro area, but are they going to fit all
locomotives, including the NR and VR locos that come into the NSW region?

At the end of the day, State Rail is a disaster waiting to happen because of
poor management, Government meddling, under funding and a total lack of
knowledge of how to run a real railway.  Customer service is declining, not
because of the workers, but the lack of them and non existent systems to
allow the workers to do their job properly, and all the time, the big boys
look at additional ways of reducing staff.

Remember when the last Government (Liberal) said the Government before had
ordered 100 Tangara's to many, and converted those cars to inter-urban
Tangara's, now we have a severe shortage of cars through all sorts of
problems that we as commuters could foresee, but the big boys ignored to
save costs.  (And we still have not enough Inter-Urban cars for the inter
urban service anyway).

The Olympics will be a trying time for State Rail, it was always going to be
tough, but shooting yourself in the foot will only make it worse..   The
above is simplistic, but the writing has been on the wall for so many years
now that Government should have learned something and though State Rail
ought to know, it seems it cannot solve even simple problems.

Dave