Speaking from a business point of view, wouldnt red class have made GSR more money, because more paying passengers could be carried per carriage?
A red sitter car can hold like 50 but a sleeper car can hold like 20.

Maybe next time they change the online booking system, they could run it on a hidden test site for a couple of weeks to check it works before updating the publicly available website?

It defies belief that they would launch a new website or booking system without testing it first. I know people who do this for big companies and the testing is always rigorous. Weeks and weeks of load testing to make sure that it not only works but that it will work when a heap of customers try to use it at once.

Otherwise you get the Census 2016 debacle!

BG

Speaking from a business point of view, wouldnt red class have made GSR more money, because more paying passengers could be carried per carriage?
A red sitter car can hold like 50 but a sleeper car can hold like 20.

Think about the difference Heath what staff are really needed in a red sitter car, none actually and all those paying for short trips might not possibly fill the car from Keswick or Alice etc so the car runs mostly empty all the way which means the car has to be maintained and serviced now those few people that did travel in these cars the fares they are paying probably would not cover the actual trip made in the car when all the expenses etc are worked out. so they decided to get rid of this car or cars on the train. And no longer does a virtual empty car have to travel all the way to Darwin and back simply because a handful of people want to do that that trip.

GSR is a company and has to make a profit. These trains are no longer a public service like they used to be though and that is where a lot of people fall foul of operating changes. The IP and Ghan are now only for tourist's that are willing to pay top dollar to travel. The small trips between places can be done either by air or bus so it it not hampering any one really.

If any mode of transport finds that only a handful of people go between point A and point B then at some stage the bean counters will say it is not worth it and so the service is withdrawn, you cannot run a company on nostalgia for old time train travel, you have to cater for the majority and hopefully make a profit doing it.

Which brings me to another point all those travelling in the red sit up car would only be paying for the trips between two places, so again the revenue from the car is not much at all, now the sleeping car with only 20 passengers as you said are all paying top dollar for their trip so just say an average local trip in red sitting car is $200 say the fare the sleeping car passenger is paying is well over $1000 per person if they take all the options offered.

So you can see clearly that removing one or two sitting cars enables one or two more sleepers to be added and thus more income made in the long run. It is all about profit though and GSR probably need to make a handsome profit just to keep running the trains.

The cars are not owned by GSR outright but are leased or they were so before a train even runs you have to pay the lease on the cars, payment to PN for haulage, then comes crews wages, the bed linen and blankets food for the dining cars, fuel for the power cars, etc, not to mention the rest of the stuff that goes on every day like bookings and office work etc.

Interesting response David Peters,
this brings me to another question - why dont GSR own their own carriages? Then they would not need to pay lease on carriages.
I do know they sold all 100+ units of their rolling-stock 20 or so years ago and then leased them back from the new owner which sounds a little silly to me.

Interesting response David Peters,
this brings me to another question - why dont GSR own their own carriages? Then they would not need to pay lease on carriages.
I do know they sold all 100+ units of their rolling-stock 20 or so years ago and then leased them back from the new owner which sounds a little silly to me.

It is essentially an accounting thing.    Owned assets, in this case rolling stock, can only be depreciated over a given time, 20 years rings a bell but it is a long time since I had anything to do with this.    So the expense of owning the rolling stock is limited to this period.

On the other hand if they lease the rolling stock then the expense of owning that stock continues for as long as they lease the cars.

Interesting response David Peters,
this brings me to another question - why dont GSR own their own carriages? Then they would not need to pay lease on carriages.
I do know they sold all 100+ units of their rolling-stock 20 or so years ago and then leased them back from the new owner which sounds a little silly to me.

It is essentially an accounting thing.    Owned assets, in this case rolling stock, can only be depreciated over a given time, 20 years rings a bell but it is a long time since I had anything to do with this.    So the expense of owning the rolling stock is limited to this period.

On the other hand if they lease the rolling stock then the expense of owning that stock continues for as long as they lease the cars.

If you look at who the rolling stock was sold to you'll find both GSR and the Carriage Owner have the same parent company, effectively they lease the rolling stock from themselves.
As kipioneer says, "it's an accounting thing", others would call it ''creative accounting'' and some would even point towards a "Tax Dodge"
Lots of companies do it.
Even you Heath will admit saving money is NOT a little silly is it?

Interesting response David Peters,
this brings me to another question - why dont GSR own their own carriages? Then they would not need to pay lease on carriages.
I do know they sold all 100+ units of their rolling-stock 20 or so years ago and then leased them back from the new owner which sounds a little silly to me.

You really need to look past current liveries on buses, train and probably trams as well as most of them are leased on what used to be called a lever lease that is you lease the object for so many years then in the end it becomes yours if you make all the payments etc.

It is sort of like renting a TV from Radio Rentals or like type of company after leasing it for the period stipulated in the contract and not faulting on the payments, you can then purchase it out right for a set sum of money. As each year you lease the object the  price you can purchase it from them decreases each year. Those metal plates on buses for example will usually tell you that some bank or financial institution owns the vehicle. Once it is all paid off then the plate is removed.

NR ( Pacific National) did this when purchasing the NR locomotives they had a plate on the B end of them telling you that St George Bank I think was  the owner the locomotive, once the loan is paid back and the NR's became actual NR property these plates were all removed!

Most transport organisations do business like this as it saves them the money of having to buy them outright first up and they end up owing them in the end anyway. It just spreads the money needed out over a number of years rather than forking it all out to start with!

Most transport organisations do business like this as it saves them the money of having to buy them outright first up and they end up owing them in the end anyway. It just spreads the money needed out over a number of years rather than forking it all out to start with!

Speaking of which didn't the 3100 suburban trains have the same kinds of plates on them at one stage (not sure about now)? Seem to recall spying something like that on one when they were near new in the early nineties - property of someone-a-rather bank or something and leased to the SA Gov.

A poxbox driver once told me, when i was a small boy and i asked about those plates, that TA was leasing them from Japan and that adelaide did not own them.

A poxbox driver once told me, when i was a small boy and i asked about those plates, that TA was leasing them from Japan and that adelaide did not own them.

That would be correct a Japanese bank owned most new STA/TA/Adelaide Metro stuff back then. Over the years as the loans to get them have been paid off the plates get removed. It would probably be a similar type of thing with the 4000 electric cars as well, but the plates on these might be out of sight of the general public though in a drivers cabin or something.

The amount of money these things cost these days the only way to get them is to lever lease them and then buy them in the end.

I once had an argument with a ex STA bus inspector about who owned the new buses at the time and he did not believe me till one day a STA modern bus was on display and I showed him the ownership plate on that bus, and as Heath said it was some Japanese bank that actually owned the bus! The ex inspector was shocked at that though, he did not know they leased them like that, he just thought they were all purchased outright by the then STA.