Around 3 PM yesterday a tree outside Newmarket railway station fell over power lines, leaving the entire area without electricity.
Newmarket Station: a fallen branch has cut the power supply to the station. No trains harmed, just the power supply. Trains continue to run.
— Metro Trains (@metrotrains) September 26, 2013
By sunset it was getting dark on the platforms.
The fault was localised to the area, as the signals were still functioning, as was the traction power for trains.
In order to keep the platforms lit up, contractors arrived with a few hired petrol generators, and temporary wired them into the station switchboard.
Unfortunately the generators didn’t seem to have enough grunt to run all of the station lighting, leaving parts of the platforms in the dark.
The reason for the power outage – a tree took out the power lines on the street outside!
Footnote
The power outage also took out all of the Myki equipment, meaning passengers couldn’t top up, touch on, or touch off.
Newmarket station is in zone 1, which means any passengers using myki money and finding the readers dead would cop the default two hour Zone 1 + 2 myki money fare, and have to apply for a refund.
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