Sydney rail maintenance program to affect Bathurst Bullet services

And road coaches will be taking over part of the XPT service that travels from Sydney to Dubbo through Bathurst as country services also face disruption.

In announcing the Sydney Rail Repair Plan on the weekend, new Transport Minister Jo Haylen described it as the biggest co-ordinated program of rail maintenance ever undertaken in the NSW capital.

She said a review of Sydney's trains had found a maintenance backlog had led to equipment failures causing major shutdowns and, according to the NSW Government, the review had "recommended an all-out assault" on the backlog to repair the network.

Ms Haylen said Sydney Trains had mapped out a maintenance program to take place every weekend for the next year or more to get the network back on track.

The Western Advocate asked Transport for NSW how, or if, the rail maintenance blitz would affect the two daily Bathurst Bullet return services to Sydney's Central Station and the XPT that travels from Central to Dubbo, through Bathurst, and back again each day.

"The Rail Repair Plan is an accelerated maintenance program to ensure we can do more work within a short period of time, to build a more reliable and resilient network," a Transport for NSW spokesperson said.

"We are working to minimise the impact on passengers by completing work predominantly on weekends when patronage is at its lowest.

"On the Blue Mountains line, maintenance work taking place on weeknights will not affect the Bathurst Bullet and XPT services.

"However, on Saturday, June 10 and Sunday, June 11, vital signal renewal work will be carried out at Strathfield Junction, closing the track between Strathfield and Central.

"As a result, the Bathurst Bullet will run to and from Strathfield, meaning passengers will need to change trains or to a bus to travel to Central."

The Transport for NSW spokesperson said that, on Friday, June 9, Saturday, June 10 and Sunday, June 11, XPT services will run between Dubbo and Bathurst but they will be replaced by road coaches between Bathurst and Central.

On Monday, June 12, the XPT service between Dubbo and Sydney return will be replaced by road coaches for the entire journey, according to Transport for NSW. The Xplorer service to Broken Hill, meanwhile, will be replaced by road coaches from Central to Bathurst, where passengers can join the train for their onward journey.

THE NSW Government says the review of Sydney's trains found that there was equipment that should have been inspected, repaired, refurbished or replaced but wasn't because maintenance crews could not get anywhere near sufficient access to the track.

According to the NSW Government, the review found this was partly because of extreme weather events and industrial action, but mainly because a new timetable in 2017 "pushed the network to its limits and severely restricted access to the tracks for maintenance".

The NSW Government says Sydney Trains' maintenance program, to take place every weekend for the next year or more, is designed to perform several years' worth of normal maintenance works in that time by pouring resources and additional crews into the task.

THE two Bathurst Bullet daily services to Sydney have faced two periods of long disruption in the past year or so, but it hasn't been as a result of a maintenance backlog.

A freight train derailment at Linden in the Blue Mountains in mid-December last year closed a section of the line for more than a month, requiring the replacement of more than 15,000 concrete sleepers.

A major landslip in early July last year between Blackheath and Mount Victoria, meanwhile, caused what was described by then Regional Transport Minister Sam Farraway as "extraordinary damage".

Passenger services were back on the affected part of the line by the end of that month.