Last year at the Bathurst Gold Crown Paceway, just as the three-year-old fillies were warming up for the Gold Bracelet Final, the lights went out.

It was caused by a short circuit in the cable for the main switchboard and it soon led to talk of the biggest meeting staged at Bathurst each year having to be postponed.

But fortunately, on course electrician Jack Hagney, his cousin Ben Hagney, brothers Hudson and McCoy White plus Jason Davis were on hand to save the evening.

Ben Hagney had been amongst the spectators enjoying the action and some social beers when his mobile rang asking for help.

"I was about 15 cans deep by then. We'd sort of set up for it during the day, we sort of have a little area up the home straight where a group of owners all go and the family, so we'd been there most of the day," he said.

"It took a bit to work out a) whether we had parts to do it and b) if we could make it work again, guarantee that it wouldn't happen again and still be safe for everyone involved in what we were doing.

"For the first 20-odd minutes we didn't think it would work again, but then little bits and pieces of ideas were coming up and we started to piece together that we could probably do something."

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Even after the group of electricians had come up with a plan to fix the problem - working by the light of their car headlights and mobile phones - it took some fast-talking from Hagney to convince stewards to give them time to fix things.

They were under pressure to make a decision as to whether or not to postpone the meeting until the next day.

"I went and seen the stewards twice and asked them just to give us 10 more minutes. I don't think it would have been the same if we had to come back the next day," Hagney said.

"I was playing the stewards along saying it would be a couple of minutes and we'd have it, knowing full well it was going to be a half hour job - there the 15 cans deep comes back into it. Lucky they sort of fell for it."

Finally, after around an hour, the lights came back on and the seven remaining races were able to go ahead. It drew one of the biggest cheers of the evening.

"It was a pretty proud feeling when they came back on, they gave us a round of applause when we were walking back through the crowd. They were all cheering and carrying on," Hagney said.

"It really was a team effort to get them back on."