Of the 140 suburban Millennium carriages now on order, 56 are to replace life-expired carriages (see section 6.2) and the balance are to provide additional capacity to cater for short-term patronage growth, mainly through the provision of eight-carriage trains on services currently provided by six-carriage trains.
Future additional suburban carriage requirements to cater for further patronage growth, assuming this growth is broadly consistent with the "medium growth" scenario discussed in section 3.1 and applied in section 4.4, are:
Similarly, to cater for the forecast intercity patronage growth the intercity electric fleet will need to increase by 40 carriages by 2005 (16 for the South Coast and 20 for the Central Coast) and by up to a further 40 carriages by 2011 (12 for the South Coast, 16 for the Central Coast, eight to replace suburban Tangaras which currently have to be used for some services to Wyong and Springwood and four for use while other intercity carriages are being maintained).
These additional intercity "growth" requirements are planned to be met by two tranches of new carriages in 2003-05 and 2009-11, at a cost of $60 million per year. The first order, for 40 new "outer suburban"carriages, is expected to be placed in the near future, while the second, for a further 40 carriages to be developed from 2006, would be timed to fit in with the schedule for the replacement of old intercity rolling stock.
| CityRail's existing fleet | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Number of carriages | Air-conditioned? | Age |
| Surburban electric train carriages | |||
| Tulloch "trailer" cars | 56 | No | 35-37 years |
| Double deck S and R cars | 498 | No | 21-29 years |
| Double deck K cars | 160 | Yes | 16-20 years |
| Double deck C cars | 56 | Yes | 15 years |
| Tangaras | 368 | Yes | 7-12 years |
| Intercity electric train carriages | |||
| Intercity V cars | 238 | Yes | 12-31 years |
| Outer Suburban Tangaras | 80 | Yes | 5-6 years |
| Diesel train carriages | |||
| 620 class | 14 | No | ~40 years |
| Endeavours | 30 | Yes | 6 years |
| Table 6.1 Suburban and intercity fleet growth and replacement strategies | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (assuming 80 "outer suburban" Tangara carriages are switched to suburban service and an additional 120 outer suburban carriages - 40 to cater for patronage growth and 80 for replacements - are purchased by 2007) | |||||||||||
| 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
| Suburban carriages | |||||||||||
| New carriages to cater for patronage growth | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | |
| New carriages to replace life-expired carriages | 50 | 20 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | ||||
| Cost | $154m | $83m | $83m | $83m | $83m | $138m | $220m | $220m | $220m | $220m | $220m |
| Intercity carriages | |||||||||||
| New carriages to cater for patronage growth | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | |||||||
| New carriages to replace life-expired carriages | 40 | 40 | 43 | ||||||||
| Cost | $60m | $60m | $120m | $120m | - | - | $60m | $60m | $129m | ||
The 56 carriages that will be replaced by the initial delivery of 80 Millennium suburban carriages from 2002 are "Tulloch" carriages, originally used in combination with single-deck "red rattlers", dating back to the mid-1960s.
By 2006 a much more challenging suburban fleet replacement task will have arisen: the oldest carriages in the initial, non-airconditioned fleet of 500 double-deck stainless steel suburban carriages will be 35 years old, and all 498 will need to be replaced over the following ten years. (It would cost more than million per carriage to refit these carriages to modern standards, and this would not address the problems posed by their ageing structures, which would still need to be replaced at a later date. State Rail studies have shown that replacement from 2006 is more financially attractive.)
One approach would be to commence a major suburban carriage replacement program in 2006, for 50 carriages per year until 2016, after which the later series of double deck suburban carriages will be life-expired and due for replacement at the same steady rate of 50 carriages per year, followed by the Tangaras.
An alternative approach has been adopted, however, under which:
The advantage of this strategy is that it will result in a more homogeneous and higher-powered "outer suburban" fleet, improving maintenance efficiency and (with only minor modifications) providing the performance characteristics that will be needed to take advantage of any future high-speed rail alignments in the Central Coast and South Coast corridors (see section 5).
Replacement of the oldest "V set" intercity carriages will need to commence by 2012. By this time these carriages will be more than 40 years old.
Table 6.1 summarises the proposed suburban and intercity fleet growth and replacement strategies.
The diesel-powered CityRail fleet includes 14 "620 class" rail cars, now close to 40 years old, which are used in the Hunter Valley. After examining a range of options for the lower Hunter, including electrification and buses, a State Rail study has concluded that the best approach is to replace these life-expired trains with 14 new diesel-powered carriages, with an option for a further six carriages (bringing the total cost to about $70 million), and to relocate three Endeavour carriages from the Hunter to the Southern Highlands, where demand is increasing rapidly. This strategy has been approved by the Government.
Additional Endeavours for Southern Highlands services and/or for conversion to Xplorers for Countrylink will also become available with the electrification of the Dapto-Kiama line.
Maintenance expenditure requirements
Table 6.1. Suburban and intercity fleet growth and replacement strategies. (assuming 80 "outer suburban" Tangara carriages are switched to suburban services and an additional 120 outer suburban carriages--40 to cater for patronage growth and 80 for replacements--are purchased by 2007)
Over the next five years routine maintenance costs for CityRail's electric fleet are expected to be about $51 million per year for the existing electric fleet, which is largely maintained at the Flemington, Mortdale and Hornsby maintenance depots, and $4 million (2001-02) to $31 million (2005-06) for the new Millennium trains, which will be maintained by the rolling stock supplier at a new maintenance facility built by State Rail at Eveleigh (2000 A$).
Routine maintenance expenditure on CityRail's electric fleet will then need to increase as the number of carriages being serviced increases and the fleet continues to age, although as the new trains replace old rolling stock such as the "S" and "R" double deck suburban carriages over the next 15 years or so many maintenance requirements will decrease (for example, brakes will need to be checked and adjusted much less frequently).
Major periodic maintenance expenditure requirements for CityRail's electric fleet over the next five years--including expenditures of up to $15 million per year on the upgrading of the Maintrain maintenance facility at Clyde and additional expenditures of $23 million to $38 million per year, recently approved by the Government, to reduce the time between major component change-outs and refurbishments from six to four years--will vary between $104 million and $131 million per year.
These estimates do not include the cost of:
Routine maintenance costs for CityRail's diesel-powered fleet are expected to increase from about $16 million per year in 2001-02 to about $19 million per year in 2005-06, and major periodic maintenance costs are expected to be between $24 million and $27 million per year.
Location and upgrading of train maintenance facilities
As indicated in section 2.1, there are almost no facilities at the main overnight train stabling yards, such as Campbelltown, Penrith, Blacktown and Waterfall, for trains to be washed and minor routine maintenance or repairs to be carried out. This means CityRail trains needing cleaning or even the simplest routine maintenance or repairs have to be taken out of service during the next morning's peak and travel to the train maintenance depots at Flemington, Mortdale and Hornsby (and, in the future, Eveleigh).
In essence, the locations of facilities for minor routine train maintenance reflect the requirements of passenger rail operations some 50 to 70 years ago, when the train maintenance depots were at or near the extremities of suburban rail services, but not those of today's geographically extended operations.
The installation of external train washing plants, raised roads for undercar inspections and maintenance and other facilities for internal cleaning and minor maintenance at the Campbelltown, Penrith, Blacktown and Eveleigh stabling yards, along with a new maintenance road at Flemington adjacent to the lift shop and wash plants at other stabling yards such as Waterfall and Macdonaldtown, would significantly improve the cleanliness of trains and the efficiency of minor maintenance activities (brake maintenance, etc).
These new facilities would necessitate substantial rebuilding of some of the yards, including major resignalling at Campbelltown, in order to permit the necessary train movements. The Campbelltown Yard works alone, which are also highly desirable from the perspectives of improving train movements through the Campbelltown area on the Main South line and improving Campbelltown station, could cost of the order of $50 million.
There are also a number of other options to improve maintenance efficiency, including the possible rebuilding or replacement of the Hornsby facilities (even if major maintenance tasks are moved elsewhere, a wash plant, stabling and cleaning roads will still be required at Hornsby), a new purpose-built maintenance facility near the Maintrain site in Auburn and a new purpose-built facility next to the existing Flemington lift shop and wheel lathe.
In developing the optimum longer-term maintenance facility solution and deciding whether to proceed with new maintenance facilities at the stabling yards, the main considerations needing to be taken into account are: