March 22nd, 2006

Sydney station maintenance and construction work had to be called to a halt earlier in the week after Cityrail officials arranged an asbestos audit. The audit was called after traces of asbestos were discovered at the Eastwood train station in Sydney.

Audits at other stations also revealed asbestos dust that was present, including Camellia station and Edgecliff station. At the Edgecliff station the dust was found on top of a cabinet and resulted in the office being closed down, although officials reported that there was no dust in the air.

Although air quality tests came back negative, the chief executive of Railcorp stated he was not taking any chances. He said: "We are adopting a very conservative approach, even though air quality tests are clean, in shutting down that facility and we will not reopen any facility until we are absolutely confident it is safe to do so."

He added: "We do know that there are hundreds of thousands of homes around Sydney that were built in the 50’s and 60’s using this fibro product. Our stations are no different. We do not have a comprehensive enough register of precisely where this fibro material is and hence the audit of every single station, so before any work is carried out we can be confident that we've got the safety issues managed."