Trains launched in the same year as Australia’s controversial bicentennial will be sweated for almost 50 years under a near half-billion-dollar insourcing and refurbishment push intended to lay the track for a return to local manufacturing of rolling stock and equipment.
First launched in 1988, the Newcastle-made T-Set and G-Set trains officially named the ‘Tangara’ will again be refitted and overhauled so they can integrate with Sydney’s new digital train control system, dubbed the ‘Digital Systems Program’, that is slated to start being delivered in 2025, along with a refit of Digital Trains Radio System that’s also slated for withdrawal in 2025.
The Minns government revealed the controversial overhaul ahead of the state budget that will also likely contain funding for whatever succeeds the current Opal Card ticketing system, whichh must also soon be put back to the market and is also due for a major refresh.
The first part of the Minns government’s major election commitment to shift major government infrastructure and procurement to a primarily insourced, locally-built model, the big switch is inherently risky because it means that agencies and ministers will cop all of the blame for problems, rather than suppliers who can be terminated or swapped-out.
During the state election campaign, Minns committed to having the state’s passenger rail fleet built locally rather than imported, with Labor having campaigned heavily on an anti-outsourcing and anti-importation stance.
Behind the scenes, the great insourcing means hundreds of crucial rail workers once employed under the Fleet Heavy Maintenance Contract are supposed to swap employers from the contracted UGL Unipart Joint Venture to government employment.
It’s these rail workers, along with existing government employees, who will undertake the Tangara refit, which is specifically cited in the Sydney Trains Review 2023 in its catalogue of “emerging challenges and risks” alongside the transfer of heavy maintenance.
Headed by former NSW Independent Transport Safety and Reliability Regulator chief executive Carolyn Walsh, the final report notes several potential issues.
“Completion of ATP [Automated Train Protection] work on the Tangara fleet is required to support the introduction of the first tranche of the Digital Systems Project on the Bondi Junction to Erskineville and Sutherland to Cronulla lines in 2025,” the Walsh review said.
“The Tangara upgrade project has been problematic and has been delayed by an inability to deliver the proposed scope of work, lack of configuration control and lack of support for outdated IT systems. Only the ATP-related elements of the upgrade have been funded. Other upgrades are required to ensure the Tangaras can continue to operate safely and reliably.”
In simple terms, that means hold-ups with ageing trains can put other projects newer trains rely on at risk.
And on who will do the work, there’s also some caution.
“The UGL Unipart Joint Venture (JV) currently employs approximately 260 staff providing heavy maintenance and supply chain services for over 1,050 passenger cars (Tangara, OSCar, K sets, V sets and all diesel trains). The contract has been in place since March 1994 at Auburn following closure of the government owned Electric Carriage Workshops and the Eveleigh Carriage works,” the Walsh review says.
“Insourcing of this contracted function to Sydney Trains’ existing maintenance workforce is planned to take place between January to December 2024. This will involve transfer of the JV workforce to work alongside existing Sydney Trains’ maintenance employees at the government owned maintenance facility at Auburn, until transfer is completed.”
Under risks, the Walsh review says there are “significant industrial implications with the transfer of the contracted workforce to work alongside the existing Sydney Trains’ maintenance workforce”.
That’s no understatement because enterprise bargaining could well roll around by the time UGL staff move across… if they move across.
And it is an if, because like many specialist infrastructure areas, there is plenty of demand for skilled workers in what is still a nationally fragmented industry where states and private operators tend to compete for rail industry labour rather than coordinating projects and manufacturing across the 30 billion a year sector.
One of the major issues for the 55 sets of Tangara, around a quarter of the Sydney Trains fleet, is that their 1980s vintage computer just wasn’t built or coded to handle systems like sensors (think door obstructions), persistent digital communications, displays and a myriad of other telemetry now common on trains.
“The actual brain of the train, the computer, is like running on Windows 95, we are going to have to upgrade it to the equivalent of a new Macbook to make it faster and more responsive,” Transport Minister Jo Haylen told ABC Radio Sydney’s Craig Reucassel.
Haylen also conceded the widely disliked fixed seating will stay, a departure from other sets with reversible seating in place since the 1920s.
Swapping out the software and control systems should not be insurmountable, but the testing will take time because the Tangara was literally a custom design for NSW, which had hoped to potentially sell the locally-made double deckers to other states.
Sydney is the only Australian city to use double deckers, with other cities preferring single level rolling stock because of the larger number of doors and shorter dwell times.
Melbourne briefly trialled a Tangara-based double decker dubbed the 4D from 1991, but only one set was ever built after the government pulled the plug. The train also had issues with its height and tunnels and wires and the cost of modifying infrastructure was deemed prohibitive.
Dogged by problems, and with more time in storage than at work, Melburnians finally gave up on the heavily-modified 4D set in 2002, with the set sold back the NSW to strip for spares before it was broken-up for scrap in 2006.
Chris Minns is determined to bring the glory days of local state rail manufacturing.
“NSW workers are great at building trains and under this government we will build trains here again. It’s going to take time, but we’re determined to do it. We’ve had a decade of missed opportunities and thousands of jobs offshored, while we purchased trains, trams and ferries filled with defects, faults and failures,” Minns said.
“This is a modest investment now that will eventually unlock a huge boost to NSW jobs and industry well into the future.”
“The 2024-25 Budget also sets aside a further $17.5 million for Future Fleet Program, the first step to reviving the state’s domestic train manufacturing industry that will build the next generation of Tangaras right here in NSW,” Minns’ statement said.
Minister Haylen said that “building a new train fleet here won’t happen overnight”.
“This funding is the first phase of kickstarting our local supply chain, production capabilities and workforce. That’s why the Tangara life extension work is vital – so we have a healthy fleet until the new locally-built trains are ready.”
That should make life more than interesting come enterprise bargaining time.
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