Apart from assets being sold off to to overseas our manufacturing has been as well. I love how our various state & federal govts keep cheering for local manufacturing etc but they themselves, just to save a few pennies allow foreign companies to build & run required assets. Having worked on the railways in Sydney for 10 years I've seen a number of changes & reviews that claimed to have saved money but all that's been done is that they've spent more.
Back in '77 my mother started work for the railways and was always on the night shift. The Eveleigh workshops there built and maintained trains. As a young 8 year old kid, it was a fantastic sight to see trains built, rebuilt & maintained. They had a specialised workforce that built engines & carriages. Most of the work was handmade. Even if you were a non train person it was always fascinating. Over the years the workshops were shut down & were left empty as trains were being built/maintained elsewhere in Sydney, Newcastle & Wollongong. The degree of workmanship meant that there were less faults & built to a high standard that most are still being run on the network today. Over the years in order to keep up with passenger usage, new technologies were employed. The state govt always did tenders for this & for those who know the tender process, know it to be very political. The technology used to keep everything moving comes from all over the world but the main problem has been that some of these systems wont talk to other systems due to compatibility issues. Some of the tenders that were won & technology built knew this but of course they got passed anyway. I remember in my time that a group of signaler technicians got together & designed a new signalling system that was compatible with other hardware & software that was being used. The tender went up for this & they were far cheaper & reliable than overseas tech. They didn't get the tender & the new system put into place experienced a number of problems. In the end after a few years the signaler techs got their system up & running & saved the state govt more money than they realised. A number of politicians also own/part own companies that supply equipment, clothing etc to the railways that get the tenders. As far as I see that, it's double dipping.
Those who know, know that the railways in Sydney have been in decline since the early 90's. Technology hasn't changed that much & over the years it really does need serious upgrading. In the late 90's the state govt of the time decided to sell off Freightrail which was the most profitable arm of the railways as the govt needed the money to fund other projects. Short sightedness proved that selling that asset off proved to be a killing point for the railways in NSW with lines being shut down, stations & tracks go into decay & that passenger trains weren't making any money for the consecutive state govts. All that was done was staff review upon staff review to cut corners etc while upper management still kept their positions. A large number of upper management took redundancies & were re-hired virtually the next day for the same job that they just left. Those of you that might remember, the T-Card system that the state govt wanted to introduce to passengers that proved to be a multi million dollar failure. I went to where the T-Card systems were being made & was told by the manufacturers that they wouldn't work. In the end & after many years later they adopted the Opal Card which is proving to be a headache. Your average railway worker was taking the brunt of govt & upper management blunders and paid the price for it.
At the turn of the 21st Century, the Millennium trains (M-sets) were introduced along with OSCAR (H-sets). M-sets were to service the city & the H-sets to replace the Intercity V-sets (which had been in service since 1970). The M & H-sets were plagued with problems. Some of the problems were caused by insufficient power supply on the overhead to cope with the power demands of the more technologically advanced trains causing them to shut down. Software bugs also contributed to the trains' poor reliability. Both these sets took a lot of power & can only be run at certain times. Again due to not upgrading other systems being used the M & H-sets could not cope. The V-sets had to soldier on but they themselves were being run into the ground due to rust & metal fatigue. With staff reviews, the people in charge of maintaining them, most were made redundant with only a skeleton maintenance crew left to maintain the V-sets. Politically the new M-sets were run in western & south western Sydney so that commuters thought that the old no aircon no heat S-sets were being replaced. The H-sets as they were intercity trains suffered the same problems but also had customer backlash as they were highly uncomfortable during the 90min-2hr trip. V-sets still had to soldier on in service & in most cases replacing H-sets altogether. As far as we saw it, they were a waste of time & money. Had they been built in Australia instead of China, they would have got their values worth. I remember when they were re-upholstering the seats, they sent them back to China, instead of doing it here. The work that was done was still substandard. Both sets were extensively tested but problems still remained. The defects included; 'Milky' effect windscreens – apparent when under direct sunlight blinding drivers, no padding in the carriage ceilings, cables obstructing the driver's view, poor-quality steel welding as evident in the indents seen on some areas of the carriage exterior, gaps in the plastic moulding, handrails not lining up with stairs and software problems which still persist today.
Just recently a new tender went out to replace the intercity H-sets & the older V-sets (V-sets still more predominant). Now you would think that with the lessons learnt from the past 16 years, you'd think that the new un-named sets would be built here & thereby save/create jobs in the rail industry. Wrong! The Hyundai Rotem/UGL/Mitsubishi Electric consortium was announced as the the successful bidder in August 2016. The companies formed a joint venture called RailConnect to manage the project. They will be built in South Korea by Hyundai & maintained for 15 years by the consortium. The State govt claims there will be up to 200 jobs for this but considering that railway jobs have been getting cut for years, it'll mean nothing. Transport Minister Andrew Constance says the winning tender offered a 25 per cent saving by having it built in South Korea. I can guarantee you right here & now that there will be a ton of problems before they even go into service like the previous M,H & A-sets and costs will blow out. It'll also give the transport minister an excuse to go to South Korea wasting taxpayers money instead of sending qualified tech staff to ensure that these trains will be network compatible.
It would be far easier to build them here regardless of what state it would have been built in. Proper jobs would have been created which would filter down into the economy. At this stage there have been staff reviews going since 2014 at ground level. My old depot & my crew have gone. The work is done by contractors. The same ones that claimed that they removed the asbestos at my old depot. There are hardly any station staff due to the Opal card which took over the paper tickets. The owners of the Opal are separate to the NSW govt run railways so if you have a problem with your card, you have to contact Opal not station staff. Only some stations have security, most suburban stations have no staff, maintenance is contracted by inexperienced workers and there is no safety. Yes there are CCTV cameras but they have replaced staff. So anyone living in Sydney take my advice, do not travel the rail network at night. It's highly unsafe & barely any police transport officers about.
The railways in NSW have been ruined by successive govts over the past 3 decades. It goes deeper to what I have said here. I feel sorry for communters that now have a substandard system. The workers are attacked by the public, upper management & the public on a daily basis saying that it's their fault that the network has run into the ground. Worst of all is that it's being set up by the govt now for privatisation. As we've seen in other states, it hasn't worked. Railways are a public asset owned by the taxpayers. We are the poor white trash of Asia.
If I've bored anyone, I apologise. On this alone I could write pages on what I've seen & what politicians & senior management have done.
Locals lose out as $2.3b NSW intercity train fleet to be built in South Korea
NSW intercity trains to be built in Korea
