How a fix for Sydney Trains’ troubled nerve centre was scaled back months before meltdown

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Sydney Trains was quietly forced to scale back plans to resolve problems at its troubled rail operations centre due to NSW Treasury baulking at funding requests about six months before a meltdown in the passenger rail network again underscored failings at the critical hub.

Confidential Transport for NSW documents reveal that an emergency messaging system for safety-critical communications was one of the plans dropped. That was despite a review commissioned by the state government in 2023 highlighting it as a problem.

The rail operations centre in Alexandria in inner Sydney.

The documents – which are marked “sensitive” – show Treasury knocked back funding requests for the nerve centre for Sydney’s ageing rail network in late 2024, which meant that the planned scope of improvements was “not achievable due to resourcing and financial constraints”.

After the funding request was rejected, Sydney Trains executives endorsed a reduced scope in December 2024 for the so-called improvement program for the operations centre at Alexandria in the inner city, which was opened in 2018 following delays, increased costs and “leadership and governance issues”.

However, executives in 2023 said “further delays in resourcing rail operations requirements present a significant risk to the delivery of major commitments including rail review recommendations”. One concern was that internal staff were being used to temporarily fill “some critical roles”.

The inadequate funding meant that Sydney Trains stopped plans for rapid infrastructure response teams, as well as the emergency messaging system for safety-critical communications.

The 2023 review into Sydney Trains had cited “poor safety-critical communications” as a common theme from various investigations or audits. Internal investigations by the rail operator between 2018 and 2022 found 22 instances of less than adequate use of safety-critical communications.

As a result of the funding squeeze, Sydney Trains also put on hold four planned changes including a working group to improve the control room floor and a manual detailing a systems road map and best procedures.

The improvement plan had been devised in response to a key recommendation in the 2023 review into the train network, which found the operations centre was failing to provide an effective response to major incidents.

Months after the improvement plan was scaled back, Sydney’s passenger rail network was crippled by rolling delays for several days last May after a train entangled itself in overhead wiring at Homebush.

Workers on tracks near a stranded train at Homebush which crippled Sydney’s rail network for several days in May.

A review of the incident, released last September, was scathing of Sydney Trains’ response, finding that communications with passengers and within the rail operations centre was inadequate, adding to confusion and delay. The operations centre came under heavy fire for lacking a clear chain of command.

Coalition transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said Transport Minister John Graham needed to explain to commuters why Labor had failed to fund critical investment recommended by its own review.

“What is the point of running two separate trains reviews if Labor refuses to fund the recommendations?” she said. “These reviews seem more about boosting Labor ministers’ media profiles than actually helping commuters – and frankly, people have stopped listening.”

The government did not answer specific questions about why Treasury declined the funding request or whether the major disruptions to the train network last May could have been lessened if the full scope of the improvement program at the rail operations centre had been rolled out as planned in 2024.

A spokesman said the 2023 review into Sydney Trains had found critical technologies to support decision-making and customer information flows at the operations centre were “de-scoped and not delivered” by the former Coalition government.

“We are investing $458.4 million over four years in improving major incident response and communications. Deployment of two rapid incident response teams starting at Redfern will commence shortly,” he said in a statement.

“This is part of the NSW government’s instruction to Sydney Trains to speed up responses to major incidents and shift focus from time-based to risk-based rail maintenance. The NSW government accepted all 12 recommendations of the 2025 independent rail review.”

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