Vandals have caused lengthy delays and cancellations on Adelaide's Gawler, Seaford and Outer Harbor train lines. The Transport Department has blamed the attempted theft of cabling for serious problems with train signals and major delays during the morning rush hour.
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00:00 Missed appointments or late to work,
00:02 common stories among thousands of Adelaide train passengers this morning.
00:06 I was to have a lovely day in the city with my future daughter-in-law,
00:11 who's just travelled interstate yesterday from Broken Hill,
00:15 and we were to go shopping today.
00:18 So she has been impacted by the delay.
00:21 Everyone was just kind of waiting for work, I think.
00:23 People were, like, kind of checking their watches and, like, "OK."
00:26 It was a particularly long commute for the unemployed,
00:29 and a long commute for the unlucky ones.
00:31 I got on at Mawson Lakes, and then, as we were going along,
00:35 it just kept stopping, starting, stopping, starting,
00:37 and then they told us that they're going to be stopping at the next station
00:39 and wouldn't be able to go again for another 30 minutes to an hour.
00:42 The reason - someone trying to steal copper cables.
00:45 Yeah, it's extremely disappointing that reckless thieves
00:48 try and steal rail-signalling cabling off our network at North Adelaide,
00:53 and unfortunately, those impacts had delays to our commuters this morning.
00:57 The department says thieves tried to use an electric grinder
01:00 to remove the 650-volt cables from this station at North Adelaide,
01:04 ultimately sending the network into safe mode
01:07 and bringing trains to a halt.
01:09 It says they're lucky to be alive.
01:11 At Hawker Street in Brompton,
01:13 there was no getting past the lowered boom gates.
01:15 The extent of the unfairness of that really gets to me.
01:18 It's not just stealing.
01:20 It's also hurting ordinary, everyday people
01:22 with massive disruption this morning.
01:25 The department says it'll be increasing security
01:27 and ensuring more cameras are installed
01:29 to prevent illegal activity in future.
01:32 Authorities say the piece of cabling had very little financial value.
01:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]