Flagship was indeed a term used to designate a service that would comply with the parameters set in the RFR contracts.The RFR projects were poorly specced on the part of Government, there was this blind expectation that Private Enterprise would come up with some magical solutions to reduce travel times at marginal cost that professional engineers in house had not thought of . As a result Class - 2 track North Shore - Corio when it should have been Class - 1, ditto one track out to Kyneton and Pakenham to Moe of which one track on each line is Class - 2 . Nothing whatsoever was done within the Metro area where largely Class - 3 track in poor condition still prevails .I recall the Thiess Alstom consortium rebuilding both the Geelong and Ballarat tracks to comply with the time the Government of the day set for it. Geelong was something like 47 minutes and Ballarat was about 62 minutes to Sunshine.
There was a nervous day or two as speed trails were done at the completion of the trackwork. Both tracks complied. However, it seems that the contract only required that at least one train a day be able to manage that timetable. Thus, Thiess Alstom left wooden sleepers in the track between Corio and Geelong as there was no gain in speed with their conversion to concrete.
At the time, many in the railways recognised that the state of the main interurban tracks was appalling. It was then accepted that, whilst it was ridiculous that contracts were written with that one public publicity style objective, the end result would be far better tracks that would also require less maintenance in the future.
The requirement was that the set journey time express had to be achievable on each corridor . It was Government that chose to limit the flagship concept to one return trip a day, and that was largely dictated by lack of peak suburban paths . And in the case of Traralgon from day one Government & VLP bowed to every squeaking wheel and put in stops everywhere including Garfield (for the Drovers dog to get off ). Also after about week 1 metro Train Controllers gave absolutely no pririty to the VLP Flagship services when Metro was up the creek . So just a politicians gimmick, doomed to fail through lack of adequate infrastructure .
Edited 28 Dec 2015 14:41, 6 years ago, edited by kuldalai
Flagship was indeed a term used to designate a service that would comply with the parameters set in the RFR contracts.The RFR projects were poorly specced on the part of Government, there was this blind expectation that Private Enterprise would come up with some magical solutions to reduce travel times at marginal cost that professional engineers in house had not thought of . As a result Class - 2 track North Shore - Corio when it should have been Class - 1, ditto one track out to Kyneton and Pakenham to Moe of which one track on each line is Class - 2 . Nothing whatsoever was done within the Metro area where largely Class - 3 track in poor condition still prevails .I recall the Thiess Alstom consortium rebuilding both the Geelong and Ballarat tracks to comply with the time the Government of the day set for it. Geelong was something like 47 minutes and Ballarat was about 62 minutes to Sunshine.
There was a nervous day or two as speed trails were done at the completion of the trackwork. Both tracks complied. However, it seems that the contract only required that at least one train a day be able to manage that timetable. Thus, Thiess Alstom left wooden sleepers in the track between Corio and Geelong as there was no gain in speed with their conversion to concrete.
At the time, many in the railways recognised that the state of the main interurban tracks was appalling. It was then accepted that, whilst it was ridiculous that contracts were written with that one public publicity style objective, the end result would be far better tracks that would also require less maintenance in the future.
The requirement was that the set journey time express had to be achievable on each corridor . It was Government that chose to limit the flagship concept to one return trip a day, and that was largely dictated by lack of peak suburban paths .
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