2650 stands at Greenview

[John Ashworth]

On Friday 10th December 2010 our Cullinan train, hauled by class 19D no 2650, stood for four and a half hours at signal GNW 252 at Greenview, due to various problems with signals and points. Passengers were detrained and sent to Cullinan by bus, and eventually we decided to run the loco round the train and haul the coaches back to Hermanstad empty, as it was too late to continue to Cullinan and the passengers wouldn't have got home until 8 pm or later. Buses brought them back to Hermanstad more or less on time.

Photos by John Ashworth

[Luca Lategan]

P A T H E T I C

Did they (Transnet) even ask for forgiveness? Are you going to get double your YQ fees back? I'm sure you took the honoust thing and refunded the pax money or gave them a free trip.

[John Ashworth]

Sadly this has become a common occurrence in recent weeks. I think three of our trains have failed to reach Cullinan recently, and most have been arriving very late with a lot of frustration. Our Tshwane Xplorer train yesterday was also severely delayed. In some cases we have given passengers a complete refund, which is obviously a great financial blow to us, as is the extra cost of buses. What is perhaps worse is the damage to our reputation. Although we explain to passengers that these situations are completely beyond our control, nevertheless it makes a steam train journey very unattractive to them and we fear that we will begin to lose business as a result. We are exploring whether we can get a refund from TFR of any of the access fees, but it's not straightforward as in many of these cases they can say it was due to circumstances which were also beyond their control (eg sleeper theft on the Cullinan branch again, an incident in Bronkhorstspruit which required a lot of attention from them, points and signals failures, etc).

[Derek Walker]

Pathetic. The fact remains that you enter into an agreement with them just as your passengers enter an agreement with you. If they are unable to deliver then a refund should be forthcoming irrespective of whether it was beyond their control or not. Just as you refund your own passengers. I dont think they really give a hoot though, and its a very worrying thing for FotR and I hope that an amicable solution can be reached.

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Why can't this be overridden and just continue. Its not like there are millions of trains around. Are they not doing this on purpose to try and get you of the lines permanently.

[John Ashworth]

In this case they couldn't give us an authority number to pass the signal at danger as the points at Panpoort were also out and had to be cranked by hand. Crank handles are no longer kept near the points in locked boxes as they were stolen for scrap and also used to sabotage trains, so a crank handle has to be brought out by a section manager. In this instance there were no section managers available.

All our recent trains to Cullinan have been significantly delayed by the signal problems. Stopping at each signal and phoning for an authority number takes time. It was only on this occasion that we got stopped for so long because of the points.

[Steve Appleton]

Hi Stefan,
This was not done on purpose. We actually have a very good working relationship with TFR operations. There are inefficiencies in the TFR system for sure, but deliberate obstruction and ulterior motives are definately not amongst them. The problem seems to be a combination of communications and signalling equipment power failures accompanied by vandalism. It seems that being a freight railway, TFR is better able to accomodate or tolerate these kinds of delays and problems than ourselves and our passengers. No doubt TFR's maintenance and repair sevices could be better but given the age of the installation, the current stormy weather conditions and the location of the dead-signalled section, perhaps it is easy to be over-judgemental.
In essence, the lack of signals and the in-operative points have practically turned Greenview to Rayton into a long single-line section with trains controlled manually using SD1 and 2 authorities which can mean long delays waiting for trains to exit the section. As I explained to one of our groups of passengers, rather experience a delay to err on the side of safety than not.
Now we know about some of the issues, we do try to insist that the TFR pilot carries a points crank which can save calling out section managers and reduce the delays. This also facilitates a crossing mid-way at van der Merwe if need be.