Australia: Termites bring down the wire!

Photos of motive and rolling stock, stations, signals and anything else train related to Australia and New Zealand! Photos should be 800x600 pixels, maximum size 130K. Very good ones will be moved to the Online Gallery, the rest will be pruned away after 14 days to conserve space.
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Steve Appleton
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Australia: Termites bring down the wire!

Post by Steve Appleton »

Posted for the photgrapher, Dennis Mitchell:
Tuesday night, 20 October 2009, at Schofields.
These photos show how our afternoon train services' on-time running can be shot to pieces.

The leading car of set G25 plus another set unidentified on run No 113K, happened to be heading along near Schofields as a white ant/termite/whatever took that last bite of a span pole which sent it crashing down, along with the overhead wiring, as the train passed by.

The leading car lost its pantograph in the process.

White ants in span poles are not pleasant and it is surprising that this span pole was allowed to remain place with the amount of infestation which it had.
Run 113K 001 a.jpg
Run 113K 001 a.jpg (199.47 KiB) Viewed 1938 times
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Run 113K 002 a.jpg (203.67 KiB) Viewed 1938 times
Run 113K 003 a.jpg
Run 113K 003 a.jpg (181.04 KiB) Viewed 1937 times
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Run 113K 004 a.jpg (199.57 KiB) Viewed 1938 times
Run 113K 005 a.jpg
Run 113K 005 a.jpg (124.47 KiB) Viewed 1937 times
Run 113K 006 a.jpg
Run 113K 006 a.jpg (124.83 KiB) Viewed 1937 times
Run 113K 007 a.jpg
Run 113K 007 a.jpg (84.87 KiB) Viewed 1937 times
Run 113K 008 a.jpg
Run 113K 008 a.jpg (74.83 KiB) Viewed 1936 times
"To train or not to train, that is the question"
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Stefan Andrzejewski
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Re: Australia: Termites bring down the wire!

Post by Stefan Andrzejewski »

Suprising that they use wooden poles. Is this common in Aus.
Marc Russell
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Re: Australia: Termites bring down the wire!

Post by Marc Russell »

The vast majority of street lights and power poles are of the timber variety
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