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REPAIRS on the Albury-Melbourne railway track won’t last without also fixing its base foundations, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau warns.
And it appears that prophecy is already coming true with several areas of the track between Seymour and Wodonga having to be re-repaired, despite having already undergone ballast rehabilitation work.
The Australian Rail Track Corporation has denied this however, and says any additional works of sections of the track have to do with extra track resurfacing only.
“The Ballast Rehabilitation Program is working — the proof is in the reduction of track speed restrictions and significant improvement to freight and passenger train reliability,” an ARTC spokeswoman said.
“We are now meeting the required conditions under our Victorian lease.”
A 2013 report into the state of the track, which has been undergoing repairs for more than a decade, and a cost of almost $2 billion, revealed ballast and track drainage had led to mudholes.
But the ATSB’s acting general manager of surface safety investigation Neville Blyth told a Senate estimates committee this week that the track’s ballast-fouling problem was “inherently a result of the track’s foundations”.
Without fixing the foundation, Mr Blyth said, the track’s problems would continue.
“The foundation is an old foundation, it wasn’t constructed in the day to contemporary standards,” Mr Blyth said, under questioning from Green Senator Janet Rice.
“We suggest the ballast-fouling is a by-product of the foundation condition.
“There is potential that unless the foundation is rectified — and we do appreciate it is a complex and potentially expensive exercise — unless that is fully rectified, there is potential for ongoing development of mudholes and degradation.”
The ARTC yesterday disagreed with this summation.
“Based on our experience in managing this section of track, the mudholes are caused by poor quality ballast and drainage — formation is rarely the cause,” the ARTC’s spokeswoman said.
“There are a very small number of discrete locations where formation has been addressed but the focus of our program, ballast and associated drainage is working.”
Mudholes returned to a section between Avenel and Violet Town in August last year.
Further work is under way on the track between Benalla and Glenrowan — it was targeted for ballast rehabilitation last year, yet speed restrictions returned to a 3.8-kilometre section earlier this year and remain in place.
“This particular section has some remaining track resurfacing work to do and will be completed in the next month,” the ARTC spokeswoman said.
“While we’ve seen some volatility — where mudholes develop in areas that the program has addressed — overall the facts are clear: the program is working and is delivering sustainable improvements to the condition of the track and the reliability of services.”
ARTC data showed reductions in the amount of time the XPT and freight services lost, from more than an hour for the XPT in 2012 to less than 20 minutes today.