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42101
Banned
Joined: Oct 12, 2005
Last Visited: Sep 27, 2008
Location: Banned
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Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 10:56 pm
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Given the garbage that morri minor is about to start with trying to now flog off the power stations AND the distribution system.
1/ Is Cityrail protected by a essential services clause that they must have preference to power supplies in brown out type strikes???
2/ when was the last time power strikes had ever severly affected the Suburban system.
3/ when were the railway only power stations shut down?
KIDDIE foamers stay out of this one as its a adult discusion not for stupid comments. 
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TheLoadedDog
El Sombrero!
Joined: Jun 19, 2003
Last Visited: Sep 28, 2008
Location: Macquarie Fields NSW
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Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:43 pm
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Greg, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, the railways are protected. There is precedent for this in essential services legislation covering both public and private enterprise (if acting under contract for the public sector). An example would be private electricity providers not being able to disconnect a customer for non-payment if life support equipment is used on the premises.
On the other hand....
The railways themselves might not be covered under this legislation, but only under "illegal strike" clauses with regards to union contracts.
In any event, I can't see the power being cut for industrial reasons in this day and age. Private incompetence leading to brown outs? Yeah, maybe. But not strikes. Hell, even Chifley ordered the troops in when the coal miners walked out, and that was a Labor Govt half a century ago!
Humphrey! We're leaving!
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42101
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Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:49 pm
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Andrew thanks mate  i thought that may have been the case but thought i best ask as there are some good inteligent posters still left here who may have the answers i needed.
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TheLoadedDog
El Sombrero!
Joined: Jun 19, 2003
Last Visited: Sep 28, 2008
Location: Macquarie Fields NSW
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:07 am
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As a side note which is not entirely relevant, but may be of interest...
When my dad worked at the Dental Hospital, that hospital made good use of its location opposite Central. Down in in the basement, was a big Frankenstein-style knife switch. In the event of a blackout, somebody could go down there, and throw the hospital over to "RAILWAY POWER".
I'd like to know if it's still the case, but I doubt in in this day and age of corporatised government services.
Humphrey! We're leaving!
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42101
Banned
Joined: Oct 12, 2005
Last Visited: Sep 27, 2008
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:11 am
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TLD™ hmmm thats pretty clever thinking by the hospital indeed know doubt it was managed under some sort of agreement.
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Bwana
Chief Commissioner
Joined: Jul 21, 2003
Last Visited: Dec 1, 2008
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:07 am
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Don't the railways run their own power network? One would assume this would fit under RC's responsibility, and would not be sold off with the rest (unless, of course, RC was sold off too)?
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Brianr
Train Controller
Joined: May 19, 2005
Last Visited: Nov 30, 2008
Location: Woodford, Blue Mountains
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:35 am
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| TheLoadedDog™™ wrote: | As a side note which is not entirely relevant, but may be of interest...
When my dad worked at the Dental Hospital, that hospital made good use of its location opposite Central. Down in in the basement, was a big Frankenstein-style knife switch. In the event of a blackout, somebody could go down there, and throw the hospital over to "RAILWAY POWER".
I'd like to know if it's still the case, but I doubt in in this day and age of corporatised government services. |
When I was young (40's & 50's) and there were lots of blackouts, we lived between North Strathfield and Concord West . Much of Concord West was on the same distribution area as the Repat hospital and were not affected but not us. It was frustrating to be blacked out but see the lights shining a few blocks away
Brian
Woodford, NSW
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Raichase
Chief Commissioner
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Last Visited: Nov 30, 2008
Location: Sydneys Northern Beaches, NSW.
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:08 am
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| Bwana wrote: | | Don't the railways run their own power network? One would assume this would fit under RC's responsibility, and would not be sold off with the rest (unless, of course, RC was sold off too)? |
I'm not sure what is meant here by "own power network", but RC buy their power from Energy Australia (so I have been told) and it gets converted at the various substations around the network - suggesting to me that the only network they maintain is the 1500v DC wiring system. Seems they rely on the power company to get the power to each substation.
Happy to be corrected though  .
- Raichase.
My Flickr! and Website - Trackside
Comments made are not my own and may be complete rubbish. |
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E1109
Minister for Railways
Joined: Jun 28, 2004
Last Visited: Dec 1, 2008
Location: Still in Alice Springs.
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:14 am
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| Bwana wrote: | | Don't the railways run their own power network? One would assume this would fit under RC's responsibility, and would not be sold off with the rest (unless, of course, RC was sold off too)? |
May be a case of they own & maintain whats on the customers' side of the transformer and switchgear but the power is still bought to that transformer by the supply authorities' lines and equipment.
Good example was in the Sydney County Council electricity supply area in Sydney City, a 600VDC supply was available to the bigger buildings for operation of elevators. The Council would supply the 600V to the building and from the supply point onwards the builders owners/operators would look after the rest.
I know for the Victorians, the Newport Power station used to feed some or all (not too sure) the old VR system for the 1500VDC, not too sure if this also generated 415/240VAC and the 110VDC for other uses i.e. lighting & signalling.
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perwaynut
Chief Train Controller
Joined: Sep 04, 2005
Last Visited: Aug 28, 2008
Location: In the Land of the Mighty Hawks, and our favourite footy President Jeff
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 10:43 am
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| Raichase wrote: | | Bwana wrote: | | Don't the railways run their own power network? One would assume this would fit under RC's responsibility, and would not be sold off with the rest (unless, of course, RC was sold off too)? |
I'm not sure what is meant here by "own power network", but RC buy their power from Energy Australia (so I have been told) and it gets converted at the various substations around the network - suggesting to me that the only network they maintain is the 1500v DC wiring system. Seems they rely on the power company to get the power to each substation.
Happy to be corrected though . |
RailCorp own and maintain their own separate HV distribution network. There may be the odd area where power comes directly from an electrical distributor, but I don't think its that common. The HV network supplies AC power to all (see caveat above) RailCorp substations, which then rectify this to 1500V DC and feed into the overhead catenary. There are a number of bulk supply points that supply power from electrical distributors into the RailCorp HV network. One is located at Berowra and I think there is one at Ourimbah. There are others, just don't know where they are. Anyone catching the train along the glistening blue waters of Mullet Creek will see the rather large steel poles along the rail line. This is a 66kV feeder between Hawkesbury River and Woy Woy subs.
Melbourne is a bit different. Most of the subs down here are supplied directly from the electrical distributor without a railways internal distribution network.
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42101
Banned
Joined: Oct 12, 2005
Last Visited: Sep 27, 2008
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:12 am
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Thanks all for these replies they help nicely.
Bwana ALL the railway owned power stations are long gone.
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Raichase
Chief Commissioner
Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Last Visited: Nov 30, 2008
Location: Sydneys Northern Beaches, NSW.
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:47 am
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perwaynut, thankyou for the information, it was especially interesting to learn about the reasoning behind those power lines along the line between HR and Woy Woy. Thanks!
- Raichase.
My Flickr! and Website - Trackside
Comments made are not my own and may be complete rubbish. |
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Pressman
Chief Commissioner
Joined: May 23, 2006
Last Visited: Dec 1, 2008
Location: anywhere between Glenbawn and Pemberton
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 1:18 pm
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It would also depend of if the state government has the railways listed as an essential service.
I know here in lil ol' Adelaide that all the major hospitals have at least two feeders, each from a different sub station, so a fault or outage at one will not shut down the Hospital's supply.
This is also the case at AAMI stadium (Imagine the chaos if a packed stadium was blacked out mid game!)(Night game of course)
We have had (in past years) some major "black outs" on peak load summer days that have been caused by either an interconnector fault or bad planning by power suppliers having their generating equipment down for maintenance at the same time. This results in rolling brown outs across the metro area and state. There is a government run organization that will instruct the private distribution company which areas are browned out and for how long.
We can thank  one of our previous State Governments for privatising the industry, we now have privately owned power stations along with a privately owned distribution network, with little coordination between any of them!
Rather than building new power stations, the only major work lately has been interconnectors to buy power from Victoria or NSW grids.
Which is fine until you have peak loading in all three states at the same time.
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perwaynut
Chief Train Controller
Joined: Sep 04, 2005
Last Visited: Aug 28, 2008
Location: In the Land of the Mighty Hawks, and our favourite footy President Jeff
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:14 pm
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| Raichase wrote: | | perwaynut, thankyou for the information, it was especially interesting to learn about the reasoning behind those power lines along the line between HR and Woy Woy. Thanks! |
As an anecdote, the steel poles were installed using a big russian helicopter.......piloted by an american......
I used to be heavily involved with that bit of line and walked Hawkesbury River to Woy Woy many times. Beautiful part of the country.
I used to love standing on Hawkesbury River Bridge on the refuges with a big freigther passing by....the bridge would shake quite a bit...all exciting
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zordmaker
Junior Train Controller
Joined: Mar 25, 2007
Last Visited: Nov 22, 2008
Location: NSW
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:51 pm
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| TheLoadedDog™™ wrote: | As a side note which is not entirely relevant, but may be of interest...
When my dad worked at the Dental Hospital, that hospital made good use of its location opposite Central. Down in in the basement, was a big Frankenstein-style knife switch. In the event of a blackout, somebody could go down there, and throw the hospital over to "RAILWAY POWER".
I'd like to know if it's still the case, but I doubt in in this day and age of corporatised government services. |
I did alot of contract work for RIC / RAC back in the early '00s at Carriageworks and at Cooks River and have come across plenty of those "switches". In fact in those days I gained a reputation as one of the few contractors who dared to touch them or seemed to know anything about the RIC network and how it works, particularly the 240/415v side (things like direct earthing and all that which no other sparkies seemed to understand). No doubt my electric train enthusiast status had something to do with it. It didnt take long to gain status as a "fixer" (i.e. someone who somehow would get the job done fast and bypass the myriad of crap and false information that their own preferred contractors kept spinning them). All I can say about all that is that the sparkie's best friend in this field is that lovely word "existing".
The CR job was quite large as they had just sacked all the old employees and their expertise and wanted me to go over the entire site and document where everyting ran from. The C1B key is still on my ring, from memory.
This I duly did - it took 3 weeks to survey the site, draw the plans and write the reports. The site was a hotchcotch of feeds from both EA and RIC feeds and substations. In some cases buildings side by side were fed from different networks.
It was fun (and profitable) for a while until they started calling me too much then demanding that I do more stuff as they get ready to transfer ownership of some buildings.
They wanted a stack of yard lights restored which I duly quoted. Then they started to make a fuss about how the job was to be done, and it evolved into a site meeting with about 7 heads of different RIC depts (cripes the Meeting itself must have burnt up morec ombined time than the job itself would have).
From there it went downhill, they began to demand, and then eventually resort to calling and begging me to do something about the job because they couldnt get anyone else to do it. The demands for reams of paperwork began, and it got bogged down.
Then a critical yard light at the entrance failed and they urgently needed it fixed that same day. Nobody else knew anything about the site so they just kept calling and begging. I quoted a 'picker and 1/2 a days work which would have been more than enough to get it done.
Then they started an arguement between themselves to get certain paperwork off me so I would "comply" with their needs. I explained the paperwork would take several days to complete and cost a fortune, well over four times what the job itself was worth. they just said add it to the invoice.
At this point I lost patience with them and just said "you want your f(*&^& job done or not? Im busy, have other customers waiting and there's no way Im going to rip off a customer (even you) beacuse of your incompetence.". I went on to suggest that if they wanted to control every aspect of the way a contractor goes about their work then perhaps they should have thought about this before they sacked their on site staff.
It ended with me politely requesting in writing that they not call me ever again.....
Just thought I would recount for y'all a story of "corporatised government services".
One other laugh with the RIC supplies was the metering. In most cases it was non existent. On some of the larger sites they had gone to the trouble to install a blankface kWh meter but the people who read them and charged the customers must have somehow been made redundant in the mid '90s so the "customers" all got their power for free, nobody read the meters, in fact mobody even knew where they were in most cases.
In case of CR there was one large corporate tenant of note running off the RIC supply via a temporary feed that had been placed there years ago by the resident staff when their own EA feed was cut. This tenant was a large user with multiple reefer farms (i.e. yards where filled refrigerated containers are stored prior to loading), they would have easily been spending over $10k per month on power when on the EA supply. Small wonder they wanted things to remain the way they were!
postscript : the entire site was resold to Freightcorp 6 months later...
zordmaker
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