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Sydney's Underground Circle Line


faulcon1
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This is a cab ride on the above title with five stations. Town Hall, Wynyard, Circular Quay, St James, Museum and then back into daylight for the run to Central Station our starting point. These trains all have guards indicated by the brief bell sound before a train departs a station. Power is from the 1,500V overhead and all tunnels have lights in them. 

 

 

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Great fun - part of my daily commute when working in Sydney although I travelled a section of it in the opposite direction.  The signalling is very interesting  to anyone used to British Signalling and comes complete with what amount to distant signals (the lower aspect) which show red instead of yellow when at caution.  The headways are extremely tight in the peak - greatly helped by what amounts to 5 aspect signalling -  and station dwell times when I was working over there were 18 seconds although the dwell at Town Hall was being increased to 36 seconds as part of a programme to improve punctuality even before I introduced a number of changes to their timetable planning methods.

 

This Google map will, I hope, show the loop in relation to what is above it -

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Museum/@-33.8694009,151.206531,15.85z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x6b129838f39a743f:0x3017d681632a850!2sSydney+NSW,+Australia!3b1!8m2!3d-33.8688197!4d151.2092955!3m4!1s0x6b12ae3d8b93f0ed:0x23d361e3fc7c8174!8m2!3d-33.8765397!4d151.2098093

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15 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Great fun - part of my daily commute when working in Sydney although I travelled a section of it in the opposite direction.  The signalling is very interesting  to anyone used to British Signalling and comes complete with what amount to distant signals (the lower aspect) which show red instead of yellow when at caution.  The headways are extremely tight in the peak - greatly helped by what amounts to 5 aspect signalling -  and station dwell times when I was working over there were 18 seconds although the dwell at Town Hall was being increased to 36 seconds as part of a programme to improve punctuality even before I introduced a number of changes to their timetable planning methods.

 

This Google map will, I hope, show the loop in relation to what is above it -

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Museum/@-33.8694009,151.206531,15.85z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x6b129838f39a743f:0x3017d681632a850!2sSydney+NSW,+Australia!3b1!8m2!3d-33.8688197!4d151.2092955!3m4!1s0x6b12ae3d8b93f0ed:0x23d361e3fc7c8174!8m2!3d-33.8765397!4d151.2098093

It's essentially speed signalling rather than route signalling, Mike. I still have trouble getting my head round having red aspects as part of a Proceed indication though!

 

I'm not sure of the current planned dwell time at Town Hall (a three-level underground station) but that is the most critical on the whole Sydney Suburban network as I recall.

 

Time you came over again - does "your man in Sydney" have the initials DH by the way? If so, I haven't seen him for ages and I'm not even sure that he's still over here.

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I have always enjoyed coming into Sydney from the north over the bridge to either Wynyard or Town Hall, and then walking around as it’s quite compact, the CBD. Just never knew this circle line existed so thanks for the video. Pity the monorail got ditched, I quite liked that.

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2 minutes ago, Izzy said:

I have always enjoyed coming into Sydney from the north over the bridge to either Wynyard or Town Hall, and then walking around as it’s quite compact, the CBD. Just never knew this circle line existed so thanks for the video. Pity the monorail got ditched, I quite liked that.

It's not a true circle, more a double-track balloon loop, but it's always referred to as the City Circle.

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8 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

It's essentially speed signalling rather than route signalling, Mike. I still have trouble getting my head round having red aspects as part of a Proceed indication though!

 

I'm not sure of the current planned dwell time at Town Hall (a three-level underground station) but that is the most critical on the whole Sydney Suburban network as I recall.

 

Time you came over again - does "your man in Sydney" have the initials DH by the way? If so, I haven't seen him for ages and I'm not even sure that he's still over here.

John, It is indeed DH although I'm also not sure if he's still out there.  His wife, Fiona, moved back to the UK on a more permanent basis a few years ago although David had in any case been spending more time in Sydney than Fiona as she had some family commitments here.  He was working well past UK retirement age although far from alone in that respect of course ;)

 

The 'speed signalling' system on the City Loop incorporates a 'stop and proceed' (at very low speed) aspect which means a train will have to pass a double red on the main aspects!  The whole basis of the system goes back a long way - I have somewhere a technical description published around the time it was first being installed during the inter-war years.

 

And yes Town Hall is critical to how it all works in the CBD area on both the City Loop and the line over the bridge as it all comes together at Central and any late running can have considerable impacts.  Hence the decision to increase dwell time at Town Hall which had been identified as a place where trains were repeatedly losing time and hitting punctuality across the network.  

 

As I gradually found out during my first session out there it was far from the only problem and there was a major disconnect between the planned unit working and the actual working which was causing mileages between exams to go haywire for reasons that nobody could understand until I asked a couple of questions (operating staff at stabling points didn't realise that units had to go to their next working as booked by the diagram, not as it was most convenient to turn them off the stabling point).   And the diagrams were not being produced on the basis of planned availability of the different types of unit  so sets weren't available for exam etc when they were supposed to be because they were covering booked diagrams - big disconnect of the timetable/diagram planning folk from what the fleet engineering folk needed; duly corrected PDQ).

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7 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

it all comes together at Central

Indeed it does and another key element of the whole system (and yet another tribute to the genius of J J C Bradfield) is the array of flying and burrowing junctions at the South end of Central station.

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