Sydney Trains: Storm shuts down T1 North Shore line between North Sydney and Gordon

Transport NSW said the weather conditions affected equipment at North Sydney, and replacement buses have been ordered to assist commuters get to their destinations.

Some services between North Sydney and Gordon on the T1 North Shore Line began running again shortly aft 5.30pm but delays were still expected.

T1 Western and T9 Northern will have significant delays during the evening as a result, which will also impact the T2 Inner West and T3 Bankstown Lines due to train flow.

These delays caused heavy congestion at Central station on Monday evening, with some struggling to get on the platform to wait for their train.

Transport NSW has advised passengers to delay their trip if possible, and for those already travelling to “allow plenty of extra travel time, listen to announcements and check indicator boards”.

“Trains may be less frequent and trips may take longer than usual,” they said on social media.

The delay was reportedly due to lightning striking signalling equipment just before 3pm, causing damage to the infrastructure.

“Sydney Trains crews are working through difficult conditions to repair the damaged infrastructure and bring services back online as quickly as possible,” a spokesman for Transport NSW said.

Earlier on Monday, Transport NSW announced delays on that same train line due to “urgent train repairs at Hornsby”.

One user commented on the latest delay, “service disruption twice a day, you guys are [raising] the bar”.

Another said that they’d just commuted from the UK to Sydney, a more than 30-hour journey, “yet Sydney trains can turn a simple Central to Parramatta trip into a worse experience than that”.

The Bureau of Meteorology said in a 4.15pm update that heavy rainfall had eased around Sydney.

Monday’s chaos follows a previous disruption to Sydney trains on Friday, when an incident that required emergency services caused delays on all but two lines and sparked a major backlog of trains in the CBD.

Arriving flights were also delayed in Sydney due to the conditions.