VIDEO: All Stations Challenge (2014) – 176 stations in 1 day
Thursday: Rail network shuts down after New Years Eve
A fire in the Sydney Trains signal control room shortly after midnight of New Years Eve caused all trains to temporarily shut down. Trains began operating soon after, but caused significant delays for the large numbers of people wanting to return home soon after the Sydney Habour fireworks.
https://twitter.com/kypros1992/status/550293445416218626
Friday: SWRL to open on Feb 8
The South West Rail Link is set to open on Sunday 8 February, with services initially to be every half hour between Leppington and Liverpool. These services will be extended in future, depending on demand, as Sydney’s South West is further developed and more residents move into it. Services could be extended to Parramatta via the T5 Cumberland Line or to the CBD via either the T2 South Line, T2 Airport Line, or T3 Bankstown Line.
The line itself may also be extended to a future airport at Badgerys Creek and then further to St Marys and/or Narelllan.
The proposed corridors for an extension of the SWRL through to Badgerys Creek and beyond. Click to enlarge. (Source: Transport for NSW.)
Transport Sydney 
Well done on the challenge! And on the vid. (almost like taggimng along…). I originally thiught of this as a bit of a diversion – but it actually quite usefully highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the Sydney system..
S: It’s a pretty big and comprehensive system compared to many sstems it is often compared with – covering most of the city with a reasonably frequent and comfortable service.
W: I’ve long thought the key problems with the system (besides the gaps in coverage) are resilience when something goes wrong; interchanging if you are to doing anything other than a standard to/from CBD jtw trip; and information for the non-regular user. The challenge rather neatly showed all of these! (but the online stuff suggests the information is getting better).