Attempted copper theft causes train delays in Adelaide’s peak hour

An attempted copper theft caused train delays during peak hour in Adelaide this morning.

SA Police said thieves had attempted to steal copper by cutting cabling at the North Adelaide Railway Station some time between 12:50am and 6am.

“This damage has subsequently caused a major fault across several metro train lines,” the police said in a statement.

Department for Infrastructure and Transport chief executive, Jon Whelan, said nothing was stolen during the attempt but the damage caused the system to enter a safety mode.

“What occurred by cutting the cable they went into a safety mode which meant we lost our signalling, we lost some of our communications and some of the boom gates came down temporarily until we instigated our safety protocols,” he said.

Mr Whelan said attempts to steal the 650 volt signalling cables was dangerous.

“It’s a stupid activity by these reckless thieves to try and take what is a minor piece of cabling with very little financial value,” he said.

Mr Whelan said “thousands” of commuters on the Gawler, Seaford and Outer Harbor lines were affected this morning, but he was confident regular train services would resume in time for the afternoon peak.

Earlier this morning, Department for Infrastructure and Transport spokesperson Matthew Bowman apologised for the delays and advised commuters to find alternative transport if possible while crews worked “as quickly as possible to rectify the issue”.

Mr Bowman told ABC Radio Adelaide’s David Bevan there were “some quite lengthy delays of up to half an hour in some cases”.

“And we’ve also had some services cancelled this morning … chiefly on the Gawler line, but that is also having some follow on impacts on the Seaford and Outer Harbour lines as well,” he said.

Mr Bowman said the issue appeared to have started about 6am and had a “compounding impact” as the morning has gone on.

Janet Grose was stuck at Adelaide Railway Station waiting for her future daughter-in-law who had been caught up in the delays and said she was “terribly disappointed”.

“I was to have a lovely day in the city with my future daughter-in-law whose just travelled into [the] state yesterday from Broken Hill and we were to go shopping today,” she said.

“… We might have three or four hours together instead of the six or seven.”

Lizzie Kupke caught a train to the city to bring to visit the Adelaide Botanic Gardens and said there were continual delays.

“We weren’t in a rush, whereas if people were trying to get to work I could understand that would be a problem,” she said.

Jordan Ogilvy travelled from Mawson Lakes on the Gawler line when he was caught up in a delay that ended up taking an hour and a half.

“As we were going along it just kept stopping, starting, stopping, starting and they told us they were going to be stopping at the next station and wouldn’t be able to go again for 30 minutes to an hour,” he said. 

Mr Ogilvy said passengers were left “in the dark” without much information, and no replacement buses were offered.

“They were telling us, ‘You should just try and get an Uber or get a taxi’,” he said.

Brooklyn Dawson said she had been was trying to get a train home to Gawler for about 20 minutes with “no luck”.

“It’s such an annoying thing … it’s just frustrating,” she said.

She said she was told there were no drivers available.

“There’s no one to actually drive the train to get here and go back,” she said.