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Ah that was my piece of gold gleaned from yesterdays travelling experiences.

Travel during peak down the North Shore line yesterday afternoon Citybound was a little haphazard. All trains from around 5:30pm were 10-15 minutes late causing serious crowding on all stations I saw from North Sydney through to Central. At that time of the day with so many workers crowding into stations it just doesn’t work when the trains don’t show up.

Anyway as quite often happens at North Sydney, a train leaves that you’ve just missed. The station slowly starts to fill up with commuters. It’s been more than 5 mins between trains, people start looking restless and worried and looking down the line for that next train, it doesn’t come. Eventually the station fills up side to side and full length with commuters, when a train does come it’s not going to fit everyone.

Usually Cityrail keep you waiting the 5 minutes past 5 minutes late(so 10 minutes) before they start informing you the trains are out of time tabled order and initially no estimate on the next train. Finally the dreaded announcement, “The next City bound service departs from platform 3″, this means going up and over the platforms, which really was pretty tricky due to so many people on the platform and half the platform wanting to stay and the other half leave.

To Cityrails credit they were on the radios to the train crew to hold the train as it was due to leave, except half of Platform 1 was making the pilgramige over to Platform 3 and I’m sure the other commuters wouldn’t have been happy if it left whilst they were half way there.

Anyway, train was a cattle service as usual, my favourite point of the whole journey was the guard of the train after Town Halls crush “Welcome to happy hour, next stop Central”.

Well I don’t know about you but I thought Sydney was pretty hot today. According to www.bom.gov.au it was 35 degrees Celsius today.

Even as I ride home now at 9:50pm the heat is stifling & the humidity isn’t great either.

So I watch my train pull into the platform(old silver K set). I notice some windows pop open & others are either sealed or have had solid glass replacements. Anyway I hop in the guards carriage as it’s pretty late.

Im greeted by a bunch of hot frustrated commuters struggling to stay cool with the pathetically small windows all open. I sit down, instantly I am one with the seat, bonded by sweat. It’s just not pretty but you all know the feeling…

As I sit glued to the seat I ponder if I’m on one of Cityrails mystical half air-conditioned half not trains I’d heard about but didn’t believe it existed.

We get to the next station, I can’t take it anymore, I may as well have showered fully clothed. I jump up & run to the next carriage.

All windows & doors sealed and I am greeted bv cool air-conditioned bliss.

So is this a good idea? Clearly Cityrail doesn’t have enough air-conditioned carriages for the whole network.

Should Cityrail run fully air-conditioned services & then others not at all. Or should they continue splitting services up 50/50?

Either way, statistically I think only fully air-conditioned services should be counted on paper, then we would have a real idea of how many trains go un-air-conditioned under the scorching Aussie sun.

The moral to the story. If your carriage is too hot try the next one.

As we all eagerly await the arrival of the new Epping to Chatswood railway line it has been revealed today that there are large unresolved problems with the project.

1. The projects costs have soared to $2.3 Billion.

2. It’s 2 years overdue.

3. The track is too steep for Tangaras to use, so older K set(silver rattlers) would have to be used.

4. Unfortunately these K set trains are so old they make too much noise in the confines of a concrete tunnel. Noise tests inside the carriage revealed up to 90dB. Workcover recommends not having to work with noise of over 85dB. This would be for 15 minutes!

5. The Intercity trains are appear to be Cityrails only solution to the problem at the moment, which will require a reorganisation of their rolling stock. This should meet Cityrails noise standards, I’d hazard it’s still going to be noisy…

I’m not sure why the Millennium trains can’t be used on the line, although there could be power limitations on the Northern/North Shore lines that held them back from crossing the harbour bridge. That said I have seen a few Millennium trains crawl their way up the North Shore line to at least North Sydney.

I suppose my question here is, would a noise level of 90dB stop you from using a train service? Or would just having your iPod headphones plugged in be enough and you’d ignore it?

Either way the issue remains unresolved and they are still planning on opening the line come February 2009.

Dear Avid Readers,

I was hoping to give you all the details you needed to survive this weekend around the CBD on the train. It seems Railcorp has some serious trackwork this weekend covering most of the lines around the CBD. They have buses on, but it’s always a pain and never quite as convenient as getting the train.

I’ve been trying to get the update of the Cityrail website but it’s been offline most of the evening so I can’t get you the details, will get on tomorrow and try to post up some more useful updates.

For the moment just be aware that if you are coming through the CBD on the weekend expect some trackwork and adjust your travel times accordingly.

As always info at http://cityrail.info.

I actually noticed this as I was flicking through my mX today, it seems every Wednesday Cityrail has a special section in mX, I must have just missed it all these years as it’s claiming to be us to issue 50 something, but oh well. I’m glad Cityrail is trying to get this information out there.

Railcorp currently has a document for review with IPART at the moment in regarding it’s fares from 2009-2012. I encourage all of you to view this document and contact IPART with your thoughts on the network, and whether or not there is justification for a fares increase or not. This needs to be received by IPART no later than November 5th, 2008. Contact them here ipart@ipart.nsw.gov.au.

In brief, and I’ve not read this document too much so far, it looks like your average Sydney fare could go up as much as $1.00 for single trips, and as much as $8.00 on a weekly ticket. A welcome part to the document is the big offset for off peak returns to be considerably cheaper, down by as much as 18% for most Sydney fares.

I’ve only had a glance at the document so far, so can’t give you all a full run down, just wanted to get it out there so people had time to write in if they felt they wanted to. Obviously Railcorp hasn’t got this widely published (they didn’t last year either…).

So is this increase a good or a bad thing? Should trains in Sydney be a user pays? Or is it our right as Sydney citizens to have Government subsidesed travel?(Even though our State Government is $1Bil. in debt).

I’ll discuss all these things over the coming days as I read the document more, for the time being, what do you think?

More information on the document referred to can be found at IPART, link below.

http://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/files/Review%20of%20CityRail%20fares%202009-2012%20-%20Draft%20Report%20and%20Draft%20Determinations%20-%20October%202008.PDF

More of an informational, than a topical discussion here, but anyway, for the greater good. I heard and read today that from Monday 20th of October North Sydney will again have it’s ticket barriers in place(I suppose Railcorp need to start getting back some revenue)….

Honestly though, if you look at the typical commuter at North Sydney, it’s mostly students(who all have travel cards) and business people(who I’d like to think are 95% honest). The sheer flow of people that go through the station is massive, all through peak, I’d even say worse than Town Hall or Central due to the confined nature of the exits.

Anyway come Monday, be ready with your ticket and also be ready with your patience as I reckon it’s going to take alot longer to get out of the station.

I’ll tell you all more come Monday. Have a good weekend

Dear All RateCityRail Readers,

It’s been pointed out to me by one of our readers that the signups to register and make comment wern’t working properly for the last few weeks. Well, thanks to Rupert the issue has now been resolved, so feel free to signup and start making comments on any of my blogs. I’m looking forward to the comments, both agreeing and disagreeing.

Register is down the bottom right of this page.

We’ll be looking to add a forum to this site soon again like the old days so you can all start your own discussions.

Cheers, RCR

A little pet hate of mine is guards announcements on trains. Every train seems to have down pat “Please stand clear doors closing” but they often fall down for “Next stop….”.

I’d say on 70% of trains all announcements are OK, but it’s the other 30% that’s the problem. Some trains can play the recorded doors closing message and then just crackles & pops for everything else. I think this problem lies with 30+ year old microphones that are never tested. Why don’t Cityrail test their PA systems? As I sit on carriage 3577 all I have is a bowl of rice bubbles for a PA. It must make life tough as a tourist…

The flip side to that is a perfectly good PA system, but a guard not making any announcements. Is it their job to though? I’ve not seen the job description of a guard so maybe it isn’t? Im inclined to think it is…Does anyone know?

I suppose Cityrails ultimate solution is the millennium train, which has a very nice automated system. I only get one of these a week so…..how many years before they are more common place?

We can only dream.

So its 5pm, I am finishing up work for the day and catching the train home. I am now in the habit of checking http://cityrail.info for any late running trains on my lines so I can adjust my travel accordingly. Today all services reported running “on time” @ 4:55pm. Cue 5pm when I arrive at the station(where I am writing this now) and all   trains are 5-7 minutes late. Cityrail doesn’t “officially” make a train late until its more than 5 mins late, this makes their statistics look better. In RCRs previous life we gathered our own statistics and provided Cityrail is not as ontime as the proclaim to be in their annual reports. Personally I think their statistics should be real, when all it takes to miss a connection is 2 mins & then you are stuck for 30 mins. What do you think?

Well, whilst not being the owner of one of these funky telephone/iPhone dudads as number of my work colleagues and friends do own them, and I seem them ALL over the trains on the way too and from work. One of my friends(RupertG) loves his 3G iPhone and pointed me towards a Cityrail timetable application that lets you check your timetables on the go.

3 used to offer a service like this, but it was webbased and not terribly easy to navigate. This iPhone application looks great and is easy to get around.

So when you are at the pub after work for those Friday drinks and need to know when the last train is, I think this could be your new best friend.

Check it out here

http://mobile.itransit.com.au