Sydney Trains 'an absolute mess' with commuters still stranded at 9pm

Seven hours since train tracks were cleared following a fatality at Burwood, Sydney trains remain in chaos with late night shoppers and people returning home from dinner joining the throng of commuters waiting for trains out of the CBD.

Delays began on Thursday afternoon, when the track closure at Burwood was further compounded by signalling issues at Strathfield, Petersham and Summer Hill.

Sydney commuters are bracing for a disrupted trip home after an earlier fatality at Burwood.
Photo: Anna Kucera

Buses were placed on standby at Campbelltown, Hornsby, Lidcombe, and Penrith to take some of the load from disrupted train services along the T1 Northern & Western, T2 Inner West & Leppington, T3 Bankstown and T8 Airport and South Lines.

The tracks had been cleared by 2pm after the fatality occurred on Thursday morning, but additional signalling issues at Strathfield, Petersham and Summer Hill compounded the delays, with multiple lines affected.

A spokesperson for Sydney Trains said customers should plan ahead, allow extra travel time, listen to announcements and check indicator boards and real time travel apps.

A "regular service" is running, but trains remained delayed and out of order on Thursday evening.

Updates from Sydney Trains' Twitter accounts urged commuters to "consider delaying your journey or using alternative transport".

But at 9pm, trains still had not returned to a semblance of normal running.

The latest issue follows a string of system-wide peakhour meltdowns triggered by a single incident earlier in the day.

A report into the rail network’s ability to recover from major incidents was released in February after the meltdown on January 8 and 9, found it remained vulnerable to disruption because it was ‘‘complex and tangled’’ due to multiple branches of lines, crossovers and junctions.

Last month, Sydney Trains cut 94 services per week in a bid to tackle ongoing timetabling issues and improve the system's ability to recover from incidents.

The new timetable that was brought in on November 26 has been blamed by rail unions and the NSW Opposition for the frequent crippling of train services.