Major travel delays in Sydney’s north after train wiring issue

A wiring fault on Sydney’s T1 North Shore Line is causing mass delays for city-bound commuters on Tuesday, amid warnings that urgent repairs are expected to take until late morning to fix.

The loss of tension in an overhead wire south of Chatswood station has resulted in the cancellation of city-bound services from Gordon to North Sydney, leaving commuters waiting in queues for replacement buses which stretch for more than 100 metres at some stops.

Limited bus services are replacing trains from Gordon to Chatswood, where commuters can travel towards the city on Metro trains. The problem was due to a failure in a counterweight mechanism on the wires, causing them to sag.

Repair crews have been on the scene since Monday night when the issue was discovered about 10pm.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said crews hoped to complete urgent repairs by late morning on Tuesday after they finished a primary fix to the counterweight mechanism shortly after 8am.

“The primary repairs are now complete. There are some secondary repairs to complete along the line, as well as some hands-on inspections from the engineers before we turn the power on,” he said.

“We’re targeting late morning. So hopefully prior to lunch we’ll have the power re-energised and trains back on heading towards the city on the T1 and the T9 lines.”

The counterweight failure is disrupting city-bound commuters on the T1 North Shore Line, but has also had a knock-on effect on the T9 Northern Line which runs between Hornsby and Strathfield. It also resulted in a reduction in train frequencies on the T1 Western line.

Travellers on the rail lines which have been disrupted have been urged to allow at least an extra 45 minutes for their journeys as services are reduced.

Uber fares in Sydney’s north have surged on Tuesday morning amid increased demand for the service. Two commuters who had been queuing for a bus at Roseville decided to split the cost of a $100 Uber ride to the Sydney CBD.

Roseville resident Anna Hill was stuck in a queue stretching for more than 100 metres from the train station to the Pacific Highway. “It’s crazy,” she said of the absence of buses running between Roseville and Chatswood station.

Another Roseville commuter, Toby Little, said he had been waiting about 40 minutes for a bus, and had seen four packed replacement buses pass him by in that time.

Traffic was much heavier on local roads as commuters opted to drive.

“You definitely don’t see traffic like this in Roseville,” said paralegal James Craig, who was late for work in North Sydney.

Trains that normally start from or end at Lindfield and Gordon are beginning and ending at North Sydney.

The latest failure comes less than two weeks after overhead wiring fell onto a train near Redfern, causing power outages across critical sections of the rail network and major disruptions during the evening peak. Transport for NSW is investigating the cause of the failure on the T1 line.

Coalition transport spokesperson Natalie Ward said commuters who were late for work or school were rightly frustrated by the latest failure.

“This is the second major disruption in as many weeks on Labor’s watch,” she said.

“Just two months ago, the Minns Labor government was boasting of a $2.1 billion investment in train maintenance. Commuters this morning will be rightly asking what they have to show for it.”

Longland said the root cause of the failure to the counterweight mechanism, which resembles a stack of weights, was under investigation.

“It might have been one of the cables that connects to those counterweights,” he said.

“Any time that overhead wiring is impacted, it does create a significant impact because trains can’t operate on the network when the power is out.”

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