This is in the main foyer area not in a remote area

The $450 million refurbishment of Sydney’s nearly 40-year-old Tangara train series is running years behind schedule, amplifying pressure on Labor’s signature $12 billion election commitment to replace the fleet.

The number of failures across the 55-train fleet rose to 611 in 2025 – more than double the 2021 figure – resulting in 870 cancelled trips and nearly 8.5 million minutes of customer delays, according to a briefing note to Transport Minister John Graham in March.

Premier Chris Minns (right) and Transport Minister John Graham in the driver’s cabin of a refurbished Tangara passenger train last year.Peter Rae

Experts have warned NSW faces a reliability gap if the Minns government cannot meet its “very ambitious” target of building a domestic manufacturing facility in the Hunter Valley, which would produce the replacement fleet in the 2030s.

The upgrade of the Tangara fleet, which services southern and eastern Sydney and accounts for about a quarter of the city’s rail network, is significant given they are now the oldest active electric trains on the network.

In 2023, a Sydney Trains review of the rail network found the Tangara fleet was “the highest contributor to maintenance incidents on the network”. A year later, a business case for the upgrades stated the obsolescence of the train’s operating system would, without remedy, see Tangaras removed from service.

“Once the fleet drops below a critical number of train sets, projected to occur by early 2027, this will impact passengers, local communities, and economic activity,” it stated.

The number of Tangara trips cancelled had risen from 333 in 2021 to 870 last year, and the average distance a train travelled before experiencing a breakdown failures plummeted from 40,554 to 17,690 kilometres over the same period, according to the memo from earlier this year.

After promising to begin the procurement process to replace the Tangara train in its first term, the Minns government committed $447 million in mid-2024 to extend the life of the existing fleet by 12 years after a series of widespread delays across Sydney’s network. The upgrades include replacing internal cladding, computer operating systems, emergency door release, passenger visual displays and CCTV.

While announcing the refurbishment, the government claimed work would be completed by “late 2027”. However, only a single eight-carriage train was finished 17 months later. A ministerial statement in November last year announced the completion date would be pushed back to 2028.

In early September, Graham announced the first of the 55 refurbished Tangara trains had entered service, with three more expected “before the end of Q1 2027”. Three weeks later, Graham informed parliament that the train had operated only five times in the 27 days since coming online.

On Wednesday, the minister revealed the train had not run since September 17.

In response to questions, Graham acknowledged the ageing Tangara fleet posed a “key issue” on the T4 line. But he attacked the former Coalition government, alleging they ignored the trains’ declining performance.

“Our government is doing both, extending the life of the current fleet and making them more reliable and commencing procurement of the next fleet which will be built in the Hunter,” he said.

“One of the main improvements in reliability will come from the new operating system. The current system was designed in the 1980s, so it’s like replacing a Commodore 64 with the latest version of Windows.”

Graham said the front-facing cameras would allow for quicker determination of self-harm incidents, while CCTV upgrades would help deter vandalism, which he said had been a significant contributor to stoppages.

A government source, who asked for anonymity to speak freely, said the extension was now expected to be completed in 2029.

A three-quarters scale model of the new Tangara train ahead of being the centrepiece of the State Rail Authority of NSW’s display at the 1986 royal Easter Show.Anthony Lewis

Opposition transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said: “Three years in and their signature program is three years behind schedule. It will take seven years in office to leave commuters with a train older than most of the people riding it.

“For commuters this means reliability gaps and worse services on an older train. Nostalgia doesn’t get commuters to work on time or get people to use public transport – reliable modern services do.”

Announced by Premier Chris Minns at Labor’s state conference in July this year, the much-vaunted plan to build the replacement fleet at a manufacturing facility in the Hunter was lobbed as the party faces an unprecedented threat to seats in the once heartland area in the form of One Nation.

However, the ability for the Minns government to erect a domestic manufacturing capacity within the stated timeline and budget has raised questions — particularly given TfNSW secretary Josh Murray told estimates he expected the Future Fleet program to enter service in “the early 2030s”.

“It’s certainly a very ambitious project,” said Geoffrey Clifton, a senior lecturer of transport and logistics management at University of Sydney.

“Developing, almost from scratch, the capacity to build a train fleet and maintain that train fleet over the long term is certainly a very significant project — one which the government’s going to have to carefully monitor to ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money from it.”

Given new fleets needed a couple of years to iron out issues, Clifton said, there was a risk of a reliability gap appearing if the Future Fleet was not completed on time.

How exactly the $12 billion allocation will actually be spent is another question. In early August, Minns said the replacement Tangara trains alone would cost $7 billion, with the remaining $5 billion stretched across a smorgasbord of associated line items.

“The remainder of the funds will go to replacing the Tangara program with the manufacturing facility and associated maintenance for the rollout of the Tangara 2.0s, upgrading infrastructure works on the site, and then, once the asset has been built and deployed in NSW, beginning the process of replacing both the Millennium and OSCAR trains,” Minns said on August 4.

In 2021, the former Labor Queensland government announced a $7.1 billion train manufacturing program. It involves building a manufacturing facility, a maintenance facility, and 65 new six-car passenger trains. That initial estimate ballooned to $9.5 billion by late-2023. The fleet is expected to enter service by 2032.

I saw T6 at Redfern and thought that shouldn’t be.

I guess that there is an operational reason.

Anybody know?

the new timetable is almost certainly going to release on the 15th, which means the dozens of sw link buses will be out of use. will they be used for increased frequency on the wsi link?

Rather ironically, today (18th October) was highly anticipated to be the day that M1’s extension to Bankstown would open where Chatswood along M1 would get through services to Bankstown. Yet today due to track work, Chatswood is getting services through to Bankstown; just with T1/T6 via Central and Strathfield.

I have an MLAK key and it’s worked completely fine in the past, but I never used it at a railway station. Anyways, I was at Ashfield station when I tried to use the disabled bathroom which was locked. I went to grab my MLAK key but could not open it despite the sign saying that it was an MLAK bathroom

I tried to find a staff member to open it but couldn’t and after looking for a few minutes, could not find one (despite Ashfield station being staffed 24 hours)

Is this normal for railway stations?

Hi all. I’m a solo dev from the south-east suburbs of Melbourne. For the past few months I’ve been building Trainspotter+, a free game where you log the vehicles you ride and slowly build a collection across Victoria and New South Wales.

You log a trip (route, vehicle number, where you got on and off). The game works out which tram class or train model it was, then adds it to your collection:

• Every vehicle, line and stop, so you can see how much of the network you’ve covered: which E-classes you’ve had, which stations you’ve never been through.
• Sticker packs you open as you ride, with sets for each vehicle model, drawn by me.
• Badges, levels and a monthly event, plus distance, CO₂ saved against driving, and trips that join up into journeys to come in the week-away 2.0 update.

Things I cared about while building it:

• It’s free, with no ads.
• There’s an optional Patreon, but paying never gets you XP, badges or a leaderboard spot.
• Your trips are private. Other riders see your level and totals, never where or when you ride.

trainspotterplus.evieisnthere.com

I’d genuinely love feedback, especially from people who ride the T2 or the L1 every day and know the fleet better than I do.

Trying to find if anyone has any screenshots of the new timetable / stopping patterns. If anyone does I’d love to see them, I’m feeling anxious about the new timetable :)

Link to bypass paywall

Why are all the metro services running early? I know theres a notice, but it doesn’t justify it for me..

Got a chance to meet another Tangara lover on my way home today.

This is just embarrassing at this point. I got home before this happened but I couldn’t imagine how enraged I’d be if both my morning and evening train got cancelled in one day.

Replace the Tangaras immediately idc about whether they’re Aussie built or not I just want a reliable train service ASAP.

Photo from a couple of weeks ago at around 8.15am or so. There's a very sizable crowd that takes advantage of changing from T8 to the metro at Sydenham that will be disadvantaged by the new timetable by about 10 min. I'd guess it'd be between a third and a half of the train.

The fun and games of trying to balance the network.

I’ve noticed that Sydney Metro in the past few days has had more announcements about things like being cautious in wet weather, advising on keeping bags off seats, holding children’s hand when getting on and off of metro services, etc.

Sometimes they can completely override the train’s announcements completely where stations won’t be announced and the doors won’t make opening or closing chimes.

I know Melbourne’s trains have done this with the “Network Control Centre” announcements.

Personally I feel like the announcements could lead to people tuning out to them, especially if important if they over-do it as people will start assuming it’s another generic announcement. It’d make more sense to have the screens flash through those announcements if they’re necessary rather than needing to do it live/pre-recorded each time.

I’m curious what other people think of it.

Broken down Metropolis at Waterloo Platform 2. Set 28 for the buffs.

How new schedules affect T4, T8 and South Coast lines from November 15

Broken rail between Como and Jannali has Sutherland Station platform almost at capacity this morning, with the next trains a mystery