Is this a spoof message?

I received an SMS beginning "Siemens issue" this morning...

Siemens issue - 37 cancellations until further notice, inc. the 8.05am from Sandringham. See website 4 details. We apologise for the inconvenience.

I had my doubts about its authenticity at first - are Connex staff really hip enough to know about TXTspeak, ie using "4" instead of "for"? Did the strangely invisible Andrew Cassidy approve this message before it went out? Or did it go all the way up to Sir Topham Hatt himself, who suggested the common touch of a bit of TXTspeak might make the message more palatable to their long-suffering customers?

Anyway, since there was a detailed statement about the cancellations on the website, I guess they weren't spoofing us about the Seimens issue!

OK, this is pretty juvenile, but if they hadn't said "Siemens issue" I would not have been tempted!

And it just gets better

A week or two ago young Chris, AKA The Met, took me to task over what he considered to be conflicting comments on my view of the old silver trains (apparently they're Hitachi's - not sure of the purpose of that apostrophe, but it seems to be a requisite when referring to those old rattlers). Anyway, The Met was confused by my dislike of them due to their lack of air-con and my statement that they were reliable.

The fact that they are still running and get dragged back into service when the new ones fail does seem to suggest that they are reliable. However only to a point. Like today when I'm on the 06:59 and the doors work fine at Ripponlea but refuse to open after that. At each station passengers stand there awaiting the door release that never comes. Eventually they wrestle the doors open, and with the springs on those you have to be pretty fit. Release them and they close with a bang, so don't get caught!

Needless to say that Hitachi was (temporarily?) removed from service after we all fought our way out at Flinders Street.

How long before the old blue ones are resurrected?

Those PDP-11s again

Following on from last week's not particularly surprising revelations that Connex doesn't know where its trains are, The Age is now highlighting the fact that their technology is prehistoric

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/01/27/1169788745745.html

As it happens, I covered this issue almost two years ago

http://connexwhinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/mon-16-may-whats-pdp-11.html

And a year later they announced a plan to upgrade/replace the PDP-11s that was discussed here in this very blog

http://connexwhinger.blogspot.com/2006/05/fri-12-may-176m-well-spent.html

Funny that we've heard no more of that since, nor is it mentioned in the recent article, which you'd have thought would be an opportune time to mention any plans that might exist to get them out of this mess.