Sunday, February 24, 2019

Newcastle Light Rail: The Opinions (Surprisingly Positive)

This article contains references to the 158 Films production Newcastle Light Rail There And Back Again, which you can watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOIHGFVQKSw&feature=youtu.be

Newcastle’s new 2.7km of Light Rail have, and probably will, continue to divide both the city and transport “enthusiasts” alike. Some will happily embrace it, others still lament the Christmas 2014 axing of the “heavy” rail service (the normal trains), which I do to a degree, but we’ve got to move on.
On 17/02/19, the Newcastle Light Rail took its first passengers. The line to get a ride from Newcastle Interchange, as you can see in this photo, was rather long.


Evidently, the city was, at least for the most part, ready to embrace its new system.

Anyway, as per the title, this article merely contains the opinions which I (for the most part) suppressed in the film I recently produced: Newcastle Light Rail There And Back Again. Most of what you read in that was facts and showcasing, as I try and keep the opinions out of my films for the sake of presenting things as they are.
One opinion did make it into the video, that on The Flyer artwork at Newcastle. We’ll get to that later.


Here’s one of the Spanish-built URBOS 100 trams used to work the Newcastle Light Rail. They look very similar to the URBOS 3s that work on the Inner West Light Rail (Central – Dulwich Hill via The Star and Lilyfield), both inside and out.
I don’t really have an opinion on these trams. They look nice and they do their job. Admittedly they have had a few teething troubles (two broke down in the space of two days, one on 19/02 & another on 20/02), but aside from that, they’re good. They’re reasonably capacious and will be able to cope with the traffic on the NLR quite well, as the high levels of usage on 17/02/19 were almost definitely an exception.
There is actually only one thing about these trams I find a bit bizarre, and to be fair it’s not entirely the trams’ fault: It’s a design choice that I find a bit, odd.



You will notice if you’ve watched the film or looked at photographs that the trams have no overhead wires. Instead, they have charging points at each stop, which power a battery to run the tram.
The decision to use charging stations and batteries rather than conventional overhead wires (as is indeed employed on the Inner West Light Rail) does have its advantages: It definitely looks aesthetically better (though not notably) and does remove any clearance issues with road vehicles on the roads the NLR crosses. It may well also be more energy efficient, but it does also have some problems, as we’ve seen.
The two trams that suffered from malfunctions in the NLR’s first week of operations both had charging problems which resulted in the batteries going flat. This is not an issue that would have arisen if a conventional overheard wiring system had been used, and it’s potentially an issue I see happening again. For the record I don’t think there’s anything overtly wrong with the system that’s in place; I do however find it bizarre that the tried and tested overhead system wasn’t used here in favour of something new and potentially unreliable. However really, it’s too early to write the system off: It’s had two faults, both of which can be attributed to teething problems.



Now, the Light Rail itself.
The Light Rail has got potential. It really does. It is perfectly able to revitalise Newcastle, just as the glamourous (I use that word very loosely) adverts from Newcastle Transport will tell you. It’s a good system: Clean, efficient and environmentally friendly.
I was about to write a paragraph here which would echo the same “Save Our Rail” opinion which most of Newcastle has been milking (and quite rightly) since the railway was closed on Christmas Day 2014. It would have gone something along the lines of: “The Heavy Rail Line should not have been closed. That decision has killed Newcastle. It’s an act of treason”. I in no way agreed with the decision to close a piece of expensive, functioning and (despite what they’ll tell you) well-used infrastructure that did not actually cut Newcastle off from its foreshore: That argument which almost single-handedly justified the closure of the line is actually complete crap. Even today I still don’t, especially seeing as the often-cited opinion that the land will now be sold to developers may well turn out to be true. That is something which really will cut Newcastle off its foreshore: Putting a load of high-rise apartments in the place of the railway.
However, now that the Light Rail has opened, that argument is dampened slightly. The NLR now fulfils the function that the heavy rail line once did. You can say that there’d be no need for the NLR if the heavy rail was left open, and you’d be right, but after over four years of no transport between Hamilton and Newcastle Beach (which is really what killed Newcastle), the NLR can indeed revitalise Newcastle by fulfilling the purpose of the heavy rail.

So that’s all for the Light Rail. However, there are a couple more things that perhaps I want to cover in this article before I close it up.



This is Civic Station as it stands today. The platforms are fenced, the tracks are gone, and it stands forlorn and alone whilst the modern equivalent less than 100m away is thriving.
The station has been unused since it closed. That should be changed. It’s a piece of perfectly good infrastructure that you could potentially turn into something else, like a café or even a museum of rail in Newcastle. I’d be all for that second idea, seeing as Newcastle Station has been turned into a café and multi-purpose complex. Hell, just use it for something other than a discarded piece of history from the olden-days. Anything please.


Unlike at Civic, it’s good to see that Newcastle Station has been reused as a café and entertainment (I think) precinct. It could have done with an actual train in the precinct, however. I say actual because nowadays, The Station has to settle with this…


The Flyer. Oh dear Lord…
Points for trying is all I can say when it comes to this thing. I do understand and approve of the logic behind this piece of artwork: To honour the Newcastle Flyer. However, it’s been executed incredibly poorly, so much that I think this thing may well be DIShonouring the Flyer more than it actually does what it was intended to do.
Obviously, it’s meant to look like a C38 class. It “vaguely resembles” one, and that’s as far as it goes. One chum I have has described it as “an insult to the taxpayers that funded it”, and unfortunately, he’s probably right. This thing has missed the marks of both honouring the Newcastle Flyer and representing a C38 class by a distance as great as the distance the real Flyer travelled.



I suppose if you look at it from this angle, it looks a marginally more like a C38…

So, to conclude,
The NLR can be great. It really can. It’s got all it needs to revitalise Newcastle and fulfil the purpose of the heavy rail, the lack of which has strangled Newcastle for the past four years. The decision to use the charging points, rather than a conventional overhead wire system, is interesting to say the least and has created a couple of problems, but those will be solved in time probably.


So, there we are. Through writing this article, I’ve actually reformed my own opinion of the NLR and am quite a bit less negative about it.
That said, I still dislike The Flyer.

TheBritFromOz

MMXIX

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