Re: Straight from the Horse's Mouth

["Dave Proctor" <thadocta@spambait.dingoblue.net.au>]

james_ccj@my-deja.com wrote in message <8802gg$flj$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...

>I'm 90% satisfy what they did to their trains so far especially impress
>with IP and Ghan . However I think they haven't try enough with
>Overland.

Totally agree - they walked in with their eyes open, they based their bid on
a daily Overland, they are now trying to walk away from it having had their
bid effectively subsidised by this fact.

>From the beginning of last year I collected all the "travel" section
>from The Australian/The Age/Herald Sun each weekend, I didn't miss a
>single publication.  So far I collected about 5 articles from each
>paper about IP or Ghan,  which means altogether Ghan and IP appears in
>these popular papers about 30 times last year , but never the Overland.
>It's not because Overland is less luxury then IP or Ghan, Overland
>gives good timing, comfortable ride and great opptunity for Melbourne
>people to explore South Australia over the weekend, say if they had an
>article about  travel by Overland plus package tour exploring wine yard
>in South Australia would definitely support by the readers.

Promotion is non-existent. When I was in Melbourne at the tennis, I
mentioned to a few people that I caught the train down from Sydney rather
than fly down - sleeping berths, no hassle on the arrival day. A South
Australian umpire commented that he wishes he could do the same, but that
there was only one train a week from Melbounre to Adelaide, and it was a
daylight service on Wednesdays, returning overnight on Wednesdays.

I mentioned the Overland, and he had never heard of it - the Tuesday night
Overland would have been ideal, as he was required to check in at some stage
on the Wednesday.

This will be one of the problems with the new timetable. People demand
flexibility. A service operating on Th, Fr and Su is just not good enough
(particularly with the hefty cancellation, as opposed to rebooking, fees
that all systems are now charging).

What I found amusing was that several people said they would have done what
I did - get a sleeper, have (more than) a few drinks before retiring for the
night, shower in the morning then breakfast, as opposed to running the rat
race to get to the airport, etc - if only they had known it was an option.
The fact that several South Australian umpires did not know of such a
service shows how lamentable the promotion of this service is.

Dave