Victoria’s regional rail services are gradually resuming following a nationwide telecommunications outage yesterday that stranded commuters.
Morning peak services were again affected by the outage, with “very limited” replacement bus services operating.
Shortly before midday, V/Line said it was gradually resuming services from lunchtime after “extensive testing of train radio communications”.
“Before resuming services, V/Line conducted its own testing and operational checks to ensure communications between network controllers and train crews were stable, continuous and reliable,” a V/Line spokesperson said.
“These tests were successful and confirmed that critical communications systems are operating at the level required for the safe operation of trains across the network.”
The outages have been condemned by those trying to use the V/Line network which has been crippled for over 30 hours. over 70,000 people per day use the Victorian regional rail network.
More info coming out around this issues and the fact that V/Line do not have their own communications networks, this has to be a seriously flawed strategy?
The entire V/Line regional rail network was halted due to a software defect that caused a major communications outage across the Telstra 4G network. Because V/Line’s train radio system relies on this network via the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), trains could not communicate with the operations centre and were stopped at their nearest stations. Services have since resumed but are subject to ongoing delays.
The Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) manages 9,600 kilometres of rail track across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria.
The ARTC, including V/Line, migrated its essential train communication services to Telstra 4G in 2024, following the shutdown of the 3G network.
Authorities say the network outage interfered with the SIM cards used on each train to communicate with the wider network.
Mr Tieppo said V/Line was in discussions with ARTC about a longer-term backup system to address the issues arising from yesterday’s outage.
“We’ve just got to remember, this is not a V/Line caused issue, this is a third-party issue,” he said.