News & Discussion: Adelaide Metro Trains

[Punishment466]

AdelaideNow:

Peak hour train traffic was thrown into chaos tonight after a derailment at Adelaide Railway Station.

Three carriages of a Noarlunga-bound train left the tracks about 500m from the station at 5.30pm.

Hundreds of commuters had to walk back to the station.

One person was believed to have received minor injuries from broken glass. Early reports said several others were taken to hospital suffering from shock.

All train services have been cancelled until further notice.

Trans Adelaide brought in buses to transport passengers to destination around the city suburbs.


Picture from 7News

[jimmy_2486]

That is the 5:18 train to Noarlunga, which is the one I catch every night back home from uni!!!

Thank god I was on holidays...geez thats the second derailment on the noarlunga line this year.

[Norman]

These will continue to ahppen until we get a new system in. It is a disgrace.

[jimmy_2486]

Tell me about it!!!

I mean come on....our train system is insignificant compared to others across the country and the world, and look at the hold ups we get....its a joke...I HATE our trains!!!

I mean if we had a humongous rail system I wouldn't be surprised, but considering how small and easy it would be to organise compared to others, its crap.

[muzzamo]

Some pics from the chaos... sorry about the blurryness. Right click and save to view

adelaide_station_1.jpg (635.39 KiB) Viewed 11457 times

adelaide_station_3.jpg (525.9 KiB) Viewed 11453 times

[Punishment466]

Cheers for those muzz. Reminds me of the London underground... .

[UrbanSG]

This doesn't surprise me at all. I feel sorry for all those on board, just what you need at the end of a day at work! I was waiting for a train last week out of peak hours and after it running 10mins late I went to the station updater service and pressed the button. The announcement was the train is running 22mins late, we apologise for the delay. Ok fine, I wait the 22mins. Meanwhile an express rolls past with no issue, but they don't think to try a pick anyone up who has been delayed like me!

Then I press the updater again. The next train will depart from platform 2 a full 1 hour later!!! :wank: What the? Then my original train comes past with only a few workers on board as an express. There must have been an incident or something with it individually further up the line. I though f*ck this and ran to catch a bus nearby.

I am sorry but this just isn't good enough. The trains usually run late anyway, but this is rediculous. The fact that the trains are absolute pieces of crap to start with doesn't help the situation. Then when this happens on top of their dismal state it is just too much. Luckily that day I allowed about an hour before my appointment. I think it is time I gave the train up and started to drive ALL the time. It is so much easier. I am sorry I would love to 'save the world' and catch a train but I have bills to pay and the service is a crock with no reliability!!! And the bus, well I hate the bus, its even more annoying.

[jimmy_2486]

I feel your pain urbanSG

When will someone save us from this mess of a PT system!!

I don't just catch PT us much as possible to save money, I mostly do it cos I get so frustrated with the inner south west traffic. It really gets on my nerves most of the time. I love the fact that I can get chauffeur driven somewhere and I can read a text book or something or do uni hw instead of getting pissed off at everyone on the road.

But now days catching the bus is shit cos it does not have its right of way like a tram would and that is starting to annoy me as a 7km bus ride when leaving uni at 5pm is getting me home at 6-6:10pm!

Trains also give me the shits as they are not frequent enough and do not reach out to other places in the city other than the north west end. I mean they have no intension of making a tram that goes to Adelaide uni where I am and in terms of catching a bus after getting off the train......well lets say I could walk 15 min faster than a bus in peak hour could get from one side of north tce to the other. WE NEED A CITY TRAIN LOOP!

[jk1237]

Wowsers, how the hell did that happen. Usually they travel very slow in that area, and especially when they're switching tracks, which looks like that train was doing. Not good. Imagine if it was travelling quick. Hopefully this will be the catalyst for some money spent on the network NOW, not in 10 years time

[AtD]

This morning I randomly decided I felt like driving to work, for the second time this month. Good timing! It is inevitable that things like this happen, the state of the track is shocking!

The silver lining is no one got hurt, and its an election year.

[AtD]

Train services return to normal after Adelaide derailment
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007 ... 045674.htm

TransAdelaide says all rail services have returned to normal after a derailment in the city late this afternoon.

A train heading to Noarlunga with 600 passengers on board came off the tracks in the Adelaide rail yards just after 5pm ACST.

Peak hour travel was thrown into chaos for thousands of people as rail services were cancelled for about an hour.

Two people received minor injuries when they were hit by broken glass as two windows on the train smashed.

TransAdelaide general manager Bill Watson says the derailment was caused by a faulty signal.

"We have points and switches that change the direction of the trains before they head down the suburban main lines," he said.

"We think there has been a defective switch which has reset itself as half of the train travelled over it, thus causing the derailment."

[Will409]

One issue that can't be over looked also is the state of the track in various places around the Adelaide yard, and especially with the Noarlunga line no doubt also. Becuase I live on the Gawler Central line, all my trains take the northern side of the yard so I have a good look over the whole set up. On the yard approach lines, most of the sleepers are either rotten, snapped or just plain old. The points also have old sleepers. You can tell this if you look closely at the middle of the sleeper. Until 1974, the then South Australian Railways used to place a small nail in the middle of the sleeper when it was inserted. As I have already said, this hasn't been done since 1975. The average life span of a good timber sleeper is between 15 and 20 years. These have been in place for twice that and are well passed the used by. The rails themselves don't appear to be in all too bad a shape but new sleepers are a must.

As an aside, earlier this evening, I had to make two trains trips from Parafield Gardens to Salisbury and back. The train to Salisbury was 5 minutes late and the train back to Parafield Gardens was scheduled to depart at 9:24pm magically turned into the 9:33pm!

[Bulldozer]

The northernmost tracks in the yards should be in top condition as they were dug up and relaid with concrete sleepers and fresh ballast a couple of years ago. But yes, the state of most of the sleepers is disturbing. I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum about the appaling condition of the southbound line at Oaklands Park (rails sitting in mud and lifting up a couple of inches out of the ground in front of the train as it pulled up!) but that appears to have been relaid with the station upgrade.

From memory, quite a bit of the Noarlunga line between Noarlunga Centre and the oil refinery are sleepered with those pressed steel sleepers they laid down under the tramline. I remember reading somehwere that they are meant to last longer than wooden sleepers while being cheaper than concrete, but trials found that they develop stress fractures sooner than anticipated or something?

[Norman]

When does the upgrade of the Noarlunga Rail Line start? I know it was announced in the budget for this year, but when does it actually happen?

In other news, the Hallett Cove-Noarlunga part will be closed off this Sunday for some work:

The Noarlunga train line will be closed between Hallett Cove and Noarlunga Centre from first service Sunday 30 September to last service Monday 1 October 2007 due to embankment upgrades. A substitute bus will be provided between Hallett Cove station and Noarlunga Centre.

http://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/cgi-bin ... f72d4923e8

[Düsseldorfer]

Ok so a train de-rails in Adelaide and they shut down the entire network. A train in Dusseldorf, Germany de-rails and gets banged up pretty bad in one of the underground tunnels, just 5 mins later they are able to route services around the affected track and continue like nothing happened, there are only 5-10min delays as a result. This just shows the urgency in which Adelaide's rail infrastructure need to be upgraded, in my opinion Adelaide Metro/TransAdelaide got rather lucky, those trains are diesel, what if there was a fuel leak and worse an explosion with deaths and serious injury, all the more reason make better tracks and upgrade to electric.