Sydney’s beleaguered train passengers have a right to be a tad sceptical. An independent review into a single failure at Homebush that stranded passengers for hours on a train and crippled the network for days is the second into Sydney Trains since 2023 when the Minns government came to power. Yet highly respected infrastructure expert Kerry Schott and her two fellow reviewers held no punches in their report. In a forensic analysis of the May meltdown and both systemwide maintenance and reliability, they identified major failings in a network on which a million people rely every working day. A wiring failure triggered a power outage that brought the rail network to a standstill on May 20. Credit: Wolter PeetersIt highlighted the need to boost investment in a creaking and aged system, as well as bolstering processes and chains of command, especially at the bunker-like rail operations centre in Alexandria.