Transport for NSW says thousands of passengers still made it to major events over the weekend, despite a pair of incidents causing delays across the Sydney Trains network.
Transport on Sunday apologised to commuters affected by delays and information outages starting Friday evening.
Services on the T1 North Shore Line became delayed on Friday night due to an issue with the overhead wires at Wynyard.
“As a result, one train became stuck mid-section outbound between Wynyard and the Harbour Bridge,” Transport said in a statement.
“This required a partial closure of the line between North Sydney and Central stations. Network Control and technicians worked to quickly implement a solution to safely assist customers off that train and to avoid causing further delays to people on nearby services.”
Train services continued with buses supplementing services during the period of the disruption.
Transport said repairs to the overhead wires were carried out overnight and completed by Saturday morning.
In a separate incident, technicians conducting an IT upgrade to increase the speed and capacity across ran into an issue early on Saturday, resulting in some operational systems taking time to come back online.
“The systems affected included passenger information display screens and app updates, network control and crew allocation,” Transport said.
“While IT system upgrades are common and rarely result in disruption, Transport for NSW will investigate the cause to prevent similar instances in the future.”
Transport said despite the delays, thousands of people were delivered to major events, including a Katy Perry concert on Friday night, and the AFL and Bledisloe Cup at Sydney Olympic Park on Saturday.
Nonetheless the RTBU – the train drivers’ union – has called on transport minister Andrew Constance to order a review of the IT issue.
“The situation on Saturday was incredibly difficult for everyone involved, especially for the commuters who were left stranded for hours on end,” RTBU secretary Alex Claassens said.
“It was nice to see the transport minister come out and address the situation and remind commuters that rail workers weren’t to blame for the issues, but what we really need to see now are steps being taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“Commuters and workers not only deserve a detailed explanation as to what went wrong, but also a commitment that everything possible is being done to ensure we won’t see a repeat of the issues in the future.”