Cattle Class on a Craptacular
Today I have again been screwed by Shitty City Rail. I have had to ride on 2 of the Craptaculars today. A Craptacular train are those without air conditioning that are still in operation within the Shitty City Rail services. These trains are ridiculous and are borderline dangerous as the heat build up is immense due to the pathetically small windows not allowing air to flow efficiently throughout the train.
A perfect example of this was the first Craptacular I had the displeasure of riding at 7:03am this morning, and within four stops the heat buildup had everyone fanning themselves with whatever they had available. Outside it would have been no more that 20 degrees celsius, which is by no means warm. The train was also covered in tags, a pointless passtime, however had clearly not had a proper clean in months.
The second Craptacular that I boarded at Redfern was truly a third world cattle class train. I swear that I saw the guards with shoe horns and cattle prods cramming patrons on to the Craptacular. I went to the last car in hope that it was not packed to the rafters. Unfortunately I was wrong and found that it was. In fact I looked around the car and saw faces of Indian and African descent. All the patrons were talking in languages other than English. I then looked around for the elderly gentleman holding a chicken, thankfully I did not see that.
So there I was surrounded and the heat was ridiculous within travelling to Central, which is one stop away. Thankfully a large number of patrons disembarked there. I was though still unable to sit as the train was still full, by the time the train had travelled 2 more stops the train was sufficiently empty that the airflow from the Craptaculars open windows normalised the trains temperature.
These third world trains are a disgrace and should be removed from service ASAP!
Another joke is the Mortdale Station upgrade. The platform and facilities have been upgraded and look great. Another planned upgrade was elevators for elderly and disabled patrons of Shitty City Rail. Whilst the elevators are physically present they are still not in operation. The elevators have been there for several months and technicians looking at them daily. At one stage the entire station had no power whilst they connected them to the power, that was in October. However, they are still non-functional. Though I am not an elevator technician I have to ask how hard can it be to debug an elevator that goes up and down a single level.
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February 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Where I work we had a lift company replace a machine, controller, door opener, all call buttons, fireman’s phone, level indicators and they also did a car refurbishment. Cost for six levels? $180,000. The job took five weeks which isn’t unusual and upon commissioning there was one teething problem which was rectified in a couple of days. All in all, not a bad effort.
The problem with lift installations these days is that there is only a handful of lift companies left and because of this they all band together and force products and a level of service on customers and this cannot be avoided. Lifts, as a rule, are hybrids of parts made in dozens of countries. Typically, a control module will be made either in Australia or Germany, car fitout components made in Australia or Italy, machines made in Mexico (roof top motor room models) or Germany (mounted under car models) and call buttons and level indicators are made in a South East Asian country. There was a time when ALL components could be made here and there were a dozen Australian lift companies in addition to the foreign ones like Otis, Schindler and Kone.
One would think that a customer the size of ShittyRail could tap their lift constructor on the shoulder and say ‘Do you want us to tear your contract up?’ but noooo. The NSW Government is obviously an exception to the law that dictates that public buildings shall be provided with an access method that allows safe entry and exit for people with disablilites.
They are hell bent on gluing down those tactile bricks, those things with the blue lumps on them, which ablebods trip over day after day but they cannot provide a basic access for some poor bugger that is in a wheelchair. It stinks - typically ShittyRail.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
So what you are saying is that the Mortdale station elevators should go live in about 6 months, roughly a full year since the physical installation. I look forward to that for the elderly, and the disabled.
I also fully agree with those lego bricks. They are counter productive wastes of space.
February 28th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Last night I left feedback on the City Rail website asking when these elevators will be functional. I am now awaiting a manager to respond with the answer and have a case number. Now call me a cynic but I am betting I will have a response the day after they begin operating.
March 3rd, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I am yet to receive any response on this issue. I am beginning to believe this is a typical City Rail tactic, that is do not inform the customers of anything, that way the customers can not be disappointed when the service is not delivered. I will now be following my case.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
[…] my earlier post Cattle Class on a Craptacular I reported the disgrace that is the Mortdale train station elevator project. I also reported that I […]