The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has signalled serious concerns about the safety of the main Melbourne-Sydney rail line less than two months after launching a systemic inquiry into its operations at the direction of the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese.
It says in a preliminary factual report, that:
“The condition of the track on sections of the Melbourne to Sydney line has been subject to significant adverse comment, largely in relation to the existence and remediation of ‘mud-holes’. There have also been a number of recent incidents on the corridor, including the parting of an interstate passenger train near Broadmeadows, Victoria on 11 August 2011, which is currently under investigation by the ATSB and the routing of a train onto the wrong railway track near Seymour, Victoria on 25 July 2011, currently under investigation by the Chief Investigator, Transport Safety Victoria.”
Let’s put this in plain English with a little more detail.
The ATSB has learnt of serious safety concerns expressed by train drivers, rail workers, freight customers and even passengers about the state of line, and that the focus of these concerns is the competency of the Australian Rail Track Corporation in finding and repairing faults known a mud holes and mud geysers.
A detailed and very alarming ABC TV 7.30 report into the state of the line in April raised grave doubts as to whether or not the ARTC was following the right engineering steps to correct these problems, or actually making them worse.
The ARTC came across as its worst enemy in that program, and it sowed seeds of doubts within Infrastructure and Transport that led on August 16 to Albanese “requesting” the investigation.
The government-owned corporation has dismissed the concerns about its competency and chosen method of replacing wooden sleepers with concrete sleepers as hype and blamed a significant increase in incidents along the line particularly in southern NSW as hype and due to unseasonally high rains.
However, railways are supposed to be impervious, literally, to heavy rain, and the idea that ARTC would seriously argue that its rail technology was compromised by the weather when other rail organisations worldwide have mastered reliable operations in high rainfall for more than 100 years did nothing for its credibility.
The Melbourne-Sydney line had red flags all over it, and it isn’t surprising that the minister saw the obvious dangers and decided to resolve the issues once and for all.
At a time when serious consideration is being given to high-speed rail in Australia, the last thing the government needs is a low-speed rail disaster on a line that, by world standards, is already a laughing stock.
Train buffs (I’m one) like trains & think money should be spent on them. Most others regard them as sort of necessary but not the type of thing you should spend a lot of money on. For decades, a century perhaps, the rail system has been seen as big enough to tolerate any individual hit but it can’t take many more. The nation should make up its mind soon whether it wants a viable rail system & is prepared to pay for it.
Thanx for this interesting report.
I overlooked the first solecism but couldn’t ignore the second. It is not ‘competency ‘ but competence.
Ben
You show your complete ignorance re railway infrastructure.
You said: “However, railways are supposed to be impervious, literally, to heavy rain…”
Are you serious? When you get the type of torrential rain that washes away entire paddocks between Albury and Melbourne, how exactly do you think small ballast stones under rail track are supposed to ‘hold fast’. If the water is strong enough you WILL get washaways and mud holes.
It’s just common sense.
Claiming that railways in the rest of the world are ‘impervious’ to heavy rain is a JOKE.
Washaways occur on railway lines due to heavy rain in Canada, USA, Europe and China. The clearest example was in Stockpool, Ontario Canada earlier this year on a railway with fresh clean ballast and concrete sleepers.
If you are going to write a story and not feed into the hype created by the union movement with their overt political agenda, you will need to get your facts straight.
That’s how ‘big boy’ journalists ply their trade.
Roy