Australia - various railway issues, merged topics and posts

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

That is very interesting, infoman.

Is it really unacceptable to 'consume food and drink on board' a train in Australia? 

What is your source for such a poll?

[TaplowGreen]

That is very interesting, infoman.

Is it really unacceptable to 'consume food and drink on board' a train in Australia? 

What is your source for such a poll?

If the food in question stinks, yes.

I seem to recall ads on public transport here encouraging people to be more considerate in this respect?

[infoman]

Would any one known of any forums(Australian based) that deal just with Australian train issues only?

Thanking you in advance.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Hmm.  I rather think you will be unlucky in looking for any forum which deals 'exclusively' with 'Australian train issues only', infoman.

Here on the Coffee Shop forum, where we have always been based on railway issues in the south and west of England and Wales in the United Kingdom, we nevertheless also cover 'train issues in Australia'.

A 'Google search' offers some suggestions for you.

[Chris from Nailsea]

In an attempt to meet your requirement, infoman, I have now merged all previous topics on the Coffee Shop forum relating specifically to 'railways in Australia' here (while retaining the original topic headings within this merged topic).

I do hope you find whatever you are seeking.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum). 

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Trains and emergency calls affected after major outage at Australia's largest telecoms company

A major outage at Australia's largest telecommunications company has led to cancelled train services, left thousands of customers without mobile coverage, and sparked an investigation into emergency calls that were not connected.

Telstra's chief financial officer Michael Ackland apologised for the issue which began at 04:30 local time on Wednesday and affected "some mobile calls and data services".

Services were fully restored about 12 hours later, he said. A software defect related to time-keeping servers at data centres in Sydney and Melbourne was to blame - not a cyber attack, Ackland added.

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the outage was "deeply concerning".

Telstra described the outage as "intermittent" but acknowledged the impact had been "national".

Ackland said the telecoms company had conducted welfare checks on customers who had called emergency services during the outage, with six requiring immediate help. Back-up systems, which divert emergency calls through other mobile carriers, largely worked as they should, he added.

Asked if the country could still rely on its largest mobile network, Ackland said: "Australia can absolutely have faith in its biggest telco... we take these outages very very seriously. Our investment in resilience and cyber security and redundancy in our network is significant but it is a big and complex network and from time to time, issues do occur."

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the country's telco regulator, the Australian Communication and Media Authority, will investigate the outage.

In Victoria, all regional train services were cancelled due to the outage while some regional services in New South Wales were also disrupted. National freight services were also affected.

(BBC article continues)