Re: SRA/Countrylink Outback Explorer

["Dave Proctor" <daproc@spambait.ozemail.com.au>]

"Glenn J-B" <grjb@ihug.com.au> wrote in message
3917DF7A.17A205A1@ihug.com.au">news:3917DF7A.17A205A1@ihug.com.au...
> > Just like in the early 90s when Countrylink scrapped the popular
> > sleeper trains to Brisbane/Murwillmbah and replaced Melbourne-Sydney
> > Express with XPT.
> >
>
> I seem to remember Countrylink telling us that they were getting rid of 40
> year old carriages and replacing them with something "modern". And the
> whole idea of getting rid of two 14 car overnight trains and one daily XPT
> service and replacing all of this with two XPTs was to "increase the
> patronage by 200 seats a day!" They forgot the small print that said north
> of Grafton City.

A bit more than this - you also had the North Coast Overnight Express (The
North Coast Mail re-equipped with air-conditioned cars) which also had some
reasonable patronage. (If they had done this with the other mail trains -
air-conditioned, buffet, decent sleepers) who knows what might have
happened.

> You can always encourage patronage by running trains to suit operations or
> advertise attractive arrival/connection times like 3:20am at Casino.

Makes a point for swapping the BNE and MWH services around - a night train
to MWH and a day train to BNE. You would then have to change from bus to
train at CSI at around 0030 but since you have just had a relatively short
journey on a bus, it is not the same as waking someone up after a night on a
train. Passengers would also have the advantage of a long sleep ahead of
them once they get on.

Although the tradeoff would be the early departure time from BNE of the
coach connections at MWH, although I am sure this could be changed to CSI or
Kyogle (to make it later) if they tried.

Dave