Trains, Transport & Infrastructure

[Carns]

47 minutes ago, Wanderboy said:

If the stupid Labor govt of the 50's didn't decide to dig up the old tram system, we'd all still have decent access.

Funny that that we are now realising the mistakes of the past and are rebuilding tram lines.

For those familiar with the Hills there is still (to the best of my knowledge) a tram line that runs under Windsor Road from at least North Parra to Baulko and on to Castle Hill.

[Smoggy]

12 minutes ago, Carns said:

For those familiar with the Hills there is still (to the best of my knowledge) a tram line that runs under Windsor Road from at least North Parra to Baulko and on to Castle Hill.

Remnant of the Rogans Hill railway?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogans_Hill_railway_line

Edited February 5, 2023 by Smoggy

[theguyyouwishyouwere]

built as a tramway that went from the south side of parra station, under the (former) church street railway bridge, it ran right up church street and up windsor road, turning up northern road to baulkham hills station, where the bowling club is now located, and all the way to castle hill. in the 20s it was converted to a railway, the start of the branchline was moved to westmead and joined up with the old tramline at the start of windsor road at northmead. the line was also extended to rogans hill a little while later.

if you go to https://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/ and view the 1943 imagery you can follow where the old line went, which was already removed at the time. 

there is also another parramatta tramway on there you can follow that went from redbank wharf on parramatta river to right down george street to the gates at parramamatta park.

[SBW]

On 4/2/2023 at 11:41 AM, Unlimited said:

Anyone know why they're ripping up a perfectly usable train line from Bankstown to Sydenham? Same thing with ripping down a perfectly good stadium in Allianz to make a slightly less **** one

The future is metro. And there’s going to be more metro conversions in place in future with the Cumberland line going to be converted into metro line, the Eastern suburbs line between Bondi Junction and Sydenham may also be converted and this may be extended to towards Bankstown.

The Government are not going to bring in anymore double decker trains, the only lines that will service the double trains would be the Campbelltown, East Hills, Revesby and Airport line, the Western, North shore and Northern lines. The Tangara, Millennium aka the MiLemon train and the K-Set would be out of service and retired possibly by 2030 and be replaced by the Waratahs A and B sets. 

Also as Wanderboy mentioned, the city circle line is one of the slowest and most congested train lines on the network. Getting rid of one service would help ease it and make running the line more functional. And it also doesn’t help that we have a very outdated train signalling system that has caused delays and cancellations on the train lines

[StringerBellend]

On 05/02/2023 at 8:02 PM, Wanderboy said:

The Smog Monster has already explained the Allianz situation. The old place was a dump and actually dangerous.

As for the Bankstown Line - it is being replaced for several reasons, but the main reason is that it takes up a slot (line) into the city and through the City Circle/Underground lines.

The line itself is not perfectly useable as you suggested, and is over 100 years old. Like all Sydney Trains lines, it is slow and also vulnerable to disruption because it is linked through other Sydney Trains lines. Metro-fying it is disentangling the Sydney Train System.

By separating it and converting it to Metro, it allows more services through the City Circle from other lines that also have to share, thus providing more services for those lines.

May I ask, have you ever been on the NW Metro? I catch it to the city at times, and seriously, the difference between the Metro and Sydney Trains is embarrassing. 100 km/h to Chatswood, and then a crawl to the City from there on the double deckers.

Don't knock it till you try it. The Bankstown line conversion will convince a whole heap of new people that Metro is the way to go.

The more conversions we can do in the future, the better.

The following map gives you an idea how things will get better.

 

 

 

Exactly and splitting the lines allows them to privatise them to seperate operators who can run both the trains and the track. They give the whole thing to a private operator and set them a buch of targets around relisability and punctuality that they get fined if they miss. They couldn't do this with the existining infrastructure as it is so interconneted and complex that no private operator would take on the whole lot, and you can't split it as who do you hold to account when a train is late? The track operator, the train operator, the train operator for the other line that's holding up everything else....

The problem Sydney has is it's network is basically back to front. Most citiies have Metro type services (frequent single level) seervices in the centre e.g. London Tube and then the more traditional heavy rail coming in from satelitte towns etc. 

Here we have the metro coming in from the burbs and the Citry Circle mess in the middle

[Smoggy]

Sigh …

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new-manly-ferry-suffers-catastrophic-engine-failure-on-sydney-harbour-20230207-p5cikt.html

I was on one of these new Manly ferries a few weeks ago and disembarking at Manly the two wharfie blokes were just ripping the new ferry apart.

They are absolutely useless.

[marron]

I'm telling you, someone made an absolute killing on the consignment for these vehicles (including the trains), and that person almost certainly had a role in the decision making.

[Carns]

1 hour ago, marron said:

I'm telling you, someone made an absolute killing on the consignment for these vehicles (including the trains), and that person almost certainly had a role in the decision making.

Corruption?

In NSW?

Unheard of.

[SBW]

13 hours ago, Smoggy said:

Sigh …

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new-manly-ferry-suffers-catastrophic-engine-failure-on-sydney-harbour-20230207-p5cikt.html

I was on one of these new Manly ferries a few weeks ago and disembarking at Manly the two wharfie blokes were just ripping the new ferry apart.

They are absolutely useless.

Chinese built ferries. Not saying that anything built Chinese is bad because 80% of the products are made in China but one thing with the ferries and other Chinese built things like this are poor craftsmanship and done very cheaply. Also these ferries weren’t really built to handle the big swells in Sydney Harbour.

Also the regional trains being built in Spain has shown its not compatible with our out of date tracks in regional areas and needs billions to be spent to upgrade those tracks and ensure we get the best out of those Spanish trains, they’re supposed to save at most 2 hours to go from Sydney-Melbourne and vice versa but the tracks in some sections are very limited and the tracks can’t handle speeds of more than 160kmh

[marron]

19 hours ago, Carns said:

Corruption?

In NSW?

Unheard of.

Right?

To the extent that nobody is even sniffing around it as far as I can see. But how else can the fact that they keep procuring items for huge costs that are untested for our situation?

[SBW]

Tokyo Metropolitan is roughly the same size as Sydney’s Metropolitan area and Tokyo’s outer suburbs expand to Saitama (Tokyo’s version of Penrith), Chiba (Tokyo’s version of Campbelltown) and Kanagawa.

It’s very interesting to see how and where the Japanese Corporation’s have their fingers on railways in which they own.

 

[Smoggy]

They have got to try and sort out the post game roads and transport issues at Parra for those of us that use public transport.

The problem I have is that we get a bus that is starts at the railways station, works it’s way through Parra, past the stadium area and exits Parra northward. When the police close the Victoria road / O’Connell street intersection it absolutely ******* destroys the flow of everything, including the transport to get fans away in a reasonable time frame. I appreciate why the cops close it off, but the impact is too much.

The bus stops up O’Connell are just mayhem, well I think there is only 2 stops but you end up with a loooonnnnggg line of people stood on the verge , some times its hard to know where to stand for the bus you want. There is often a mad panic when a bus arrives and people realise they are in the wrong spot or the bus that was supposed to stop either doesn’t or continues and stops way up the road.

When the tram opens for business it will be another option and may ease things for some, but not sure. I can get home from the derby in the city on public transport quicker than the one at Parra lol

I don’t know how you fix the bus issue, ideally you would have a dedicated road for busses and keep that flowing, and proper bus stops on that road, perhaps not possible.

Perhaps the worst ground I have been to for public transport get away really.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Smoggy

[MathyouWSW]

A more indepth look into Sydney's V set trains:
 

 

[Midfielder]

Reports in the media today the Ziz zag railway will reopen soon

[Edinburgh]

58 minutes ago, Midfielder said:

Reports in the media today the Ziz zag railway will reopen soon

Yep, saw the story on the news last night 

[marron]

Almost ten years that's taken I think. Maybe longer. Pretty amazing given it's all volunteer based. Looking forward to it.

[marron]

Although, bugger, I never did enough trespassing up that way on the tracks and tunnels 

[Bones]

5 hours ago, Midfielder said:

Reports in the media today the Ziz zag railway will reopen soon

Drove past it last week it’s looking nice.

[Bones]

4 hours ago, marron said:

Although, bugger, I never did enough trespassing up that way on the tracks and tunnels 

There’s a cool glowworm tunnel up there.

[marron]

11 minutes ago, Bones said:

There’s a cool glowworm tunnel up there.

Yeah, that's become more or less inaccessible of late. Takes a fair bit of hardcore 4WDing to get there and even then it's a bit sketchy. Newnes got smashed fire wise so there was nothing to hold anything together when the fire came and no money to keep it in any sort of useable state.

There are some other places though. Just have to do it at night and know where.

 

Before the last fires at Zig Zag I did have a day having a poke about, there were some wrecked carriages but also some in good nick you could get into. But I always meant to go back and do a bit more and see what else was out there. I'd imagine now it would be all pretty clear and ready to go and probably a bit more secure if they are about to get it up and running again.

[Smoggy]

10 hours ago, Midfielder said:

Reports in the media today the Ziz zag railway will reopen soon

Yeah, I see this in the news, will be great to get it going again.

[theguyyouwishyouwere]

On 18/02/2023 at 6:12 PM, Bones said:

There’s a cool glowworm tunnel up there.

that's on the old Newnes railway line. the platforms for the junction are still there but the last building got destroyed in one of the huge fires there a few years ago. building was well over 100 years old. 

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, theguyyouwishyouwere said:

that's on the old Newnes railway line. the platforms for the junction are still there but the last building got destroyed in one of the huge fires there a few years ago. building was well over 100 years old. 

Lots of industrial ruins and stuff put that way if you are in to that kind of thing, like me. Interesting area.

Last time I did a walk out that way there were $$$$ notes blowing around in the wind. Odd that was, not a soul around 

 

[Bones]

Getting sidetracked I know. Have any of you ever heard of or been to Deep Pass campground in Newnes? It is great, it has a lovely spring fed creek with waterfalls and red crayfish/yabbies. Worth a trip.

[Midfielder]

2023 vid

 

[marron]

On 21/02/2023 at 11:22 AM, Bones said:

Getting sidetracked I know. Have any of you ever heard of or been to Deep Pass campground in Newnes? It is great, it has a lovely spring fed creek with waterfalls and red crayfish/yabbies. Worth a trip.

Haven't! Thanks for the tip. Was it driveable along the firetrail or a bit of a hike?

[Bones]

Just now, marron said:

Haven't! Thanks for the tip. Was it driveable along the firetrail or a bit of a hike?

You have to park your car and hike about 20-30 mins. It’s downhill in and uphill out obviously which can be nasty if you’re carrying weight. There was portaloo like facilities last time I went which was a new addition. There’s a cool sort of mini Uluru there aswell which has great views at sunset from the top.
 

Give it a google it’s not far from the zig zag maybe 10-15 mins from memory but you do have to make a turn or two on the tracks to find the parking area which was never clearly marked, I always had trouble remembering the way. 

[marron]

I'm used to rough and ready, doesn't count for me unless I've walked to get there. Last time I took the kids camping it was a 650m descent (1800 odd stairs) and then a solid walk. And my last overnighter was 6 hours of bushbashing before I got to where I wanted to be. Just wondering how close you can drive to.

[Bones]

12 minutes ago, Bones said:

You have to park your car and hike about 20-30 mins. It’s downhill in and uphill out obviously which can be nasty if you’re carrying weight. There was portaloo like facilities last time I went which was a new addition. There’s a cool sort of mini Uluru there aswell which has great views at sunset from the top.
 

Give it a google it’s not far from the zig zag maybe 10-15 mins from memory but you do have to make a turn or two on the tracks to find the parking area which was never clearly marked, I always had trouble remembering the way. 

Lol just read that back, I mean if you’re carrying weight as in supplies and inventory.

[Bones]

Just now, marron said:

I'm used to rough and ready, doesn't count for me unless I've walked to get there. Last time I took the kids camping it was a 650m descent (1800 odd stairs) and then a solid walk. And my last overnighter was 6 hours of bushbashing before I got to where I wanted to be. Just wondering how close you can drive to.

They would honestly love it, I just googled images myself because it’s been a while and it’s just a great spot. Have a look at the pics on the net you’ll fall in love. Most of the waterfalls are max 3m high and there’s climbing aids as in ropes on the sides of most. If you fall you just land in the icy cold water and everyone gets to laugh at you.