Vandalism and theft of Sydney Trains’ infrastructure at Lithgow caused widespread outages on the Blue Mountains Line on Sunday, with coaches replacing intercity and XPT services between Lithgow and Mount Victoria.
NSW Police are investigating after five metres of cabling were cut and removed.
The Central to Bathurst service was starting from Lithgow, with coaches replacing services from Central to Lithgow.
As the Dubbo XPT couldn’t pass through the mountains, both the inbound and outbound services were affected.
The issue was resolved and services recommenced just before 6pm after infrastructure teams rebuilt the cable relays.
Theft of multiple types of cable was discovered around 3:30am Sunday morning 23 June 2024. This vandalism led to multiple track failures, train communications failures and impacts to phone lines, local internet and other systems.
Sydney Trains technicians were able to reroute power by around 11am, and continued to work on communications cables to allow the line to reopen late Sunday afternoon.
Transport for NSW Secretary Josh Murray said this shouldn’t be considered a petty act.
“This is a high-risk issue for Transport and we work closely with NSW Police to deter and pursue criminal behaviour on the network, including handing over vision from our 13,000 CCTV cameras," he said.
“Not only does theft like this severely inconvenience potentially thousands of passengers and staff, but given we operate a live electrical and rail environment, vandals are putting lives at risk – including their own”.
Those charged may face a range of charges for interfering with the State’s rail network, and face penalties of up to two years imprisonment, hefty fines, or both.
The matter has been reported to NSW Police who are investigating. If anyone has any information about the incident, they are urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Troy has more than 20 years experience as a journalist, working with some of Australia's leading media organisations. In 2023, he was named Editor of the Year at the Mumbrella Publish Awards.