The safety of passengers on the Sydney to Newcastle train line has been put at "high risk" by signal controllers "possibly" distracted playing games and shopping on their work computers.
The issue has come to light after an Office of Transport Safety Investigations (OTSI) report tabled in NSW Parliament found a signaller had incorrectly allowed a Newcastle-bound train to enter a section of closed track in January last year.
The Homebush-based signaller failed to properly block the track for scheduled maintenance work despite giving verbal assurances to a manager that they had done so.
"Although there was no fatality or serious injury on this day, this type of incident carries a high risk of collision between the train and workers or equipment," the OTSI report says.
The report's most damning finding was that "signallers using electronic devices, including using work computers for personal use, while operating the signal panel" was a "known issue".
The signaller's direct manager at the Homebush rail control centre told investigators that it was common for informal warnings to be issued to signallers to stop using electronic devices for personal use.
Thirty per cent of signallers in the control centre had received formal warnings for breaching a policy on using personal devices.
The manager told OTSI there was a "widespread culture among signallers of using the work computer to access non-work-related applications and sites during their shift".
The 'sideways club'
"The [manager] advised it was common for signallers to sit sideways facing their computers rather than facing their signalling operating panel," the investigation report says.
"The [manager] called it 'the sideways club' and explained that [managers] saw it as an indication that non-compliance was possibly occurring."
The incident at the centre of the OTSI report happened on January 11, 2023, when a Newcastle-bound passenger train travelling between Cowan and the Hawkesbury River entered a zone closed in both directions for overnight maintenance.
The four-car train travelled through a section of track which was meant to be shut from 9.55pm to 10.10pm to give maintenance staff access to an adjacent line.
The closures of both lines, known as local possession authorities (LPAs), started 10 minutes late at 10.05pm.
The investigators found a Sydney Trains manager on duty at the Rail Operations Centre in Alexandria had authorised both closures "after verbal assurance" from the signaller at Homebush that "protecting signals had been placed to stop and relevant signal blocking facilities had been applied for both possessions".
"At 2209, NSW Trains electric passenger service N191 traversed ... through a section of track that was meant to be protected by LPA 1 at that time," the OTSI report says.
"The SHN [signaller] had authorised N191 to take this route using the Advanced Train Running Information Control System (ATRICS), which allowed the movement as the track was not protected."
The OTSI report noted a fatal accident at Kogarah in 2010 when a train had struck a worker at a time when the signaller "may have been using a personal laptop computer ... while operating the signal panel".
The latest investigation found staff responsible for the safe running of the rail network had missed "multiple opportunities to detect the absence of protection" on the track at Cowan.
The Homebush manager told investigators that "after they had been made aware of the incident they observed a type of game open on the [signaller's] work computer at their workstation".
"The screen quickly went into screensaver mode as the [manager] approached and the [manager] was not able to identify what the game was," the report says.
The signaller later told the manager and investigators that they had not been playing the game at the time of the incident.
A Transport for NSW IT report found "evidence of activity on various news, games, social media, shopping and other non-related work sites and applications" on the workstation computer but, "due to the nature of the set-up of the computer, it was not possible to assign the usage to a particular person".
The OTSI report found the signaller had "likely not fully familiarised themselves with the LPA arrangements possibly due to inattention or distraction caused by the use of the signaller's workstation computer for non-work-related purposes".
Signaller 'flustered'
The signaller told investigators they had "all the necessary documentation" for the scheduled trackwork but had not read the material before receiving the first phone call in preparation for the trackwork.
"The [signaller] spoke with a worker associated with the movement of a large rail grinding machine and asked what STN (special train notices) timetable the grinder was running on, an indication they were perhaps not yet fully up to date with the supporting documents for the trackwork during these conversations," the report says.
"The recorded audio of the interactions between the SHN and other workers indicates the SHN may have become flustered by the time of the commencement of the LPAs."
The investigation found the signaller, who had been in the job for 18 years, had been involved in 16 recorded incidents between 2019 and 2023 that required coaching or other interventions.
The most serious of these incidents had involved the routing of two freight locomotives onto a closed track in western Sydney on June 28, 2020, when the signaller failed to set protecting signals to stop.
"Sydney Trains did not have a system to identify if this level of performance by signallers was regarded as acceptable or unacceptable," the OTSI report says.
