Re: Wonderful, Customer-Responsive GSR

[Adrian Linklater <babyspiceboy@yahoo.com>]

Barry wrote:

> Overnight trains for point to point travel are dead as a money making
> venture in Australia. Not only that, they do not even perform a public
> service as other modes of transport fill the gaps quite adequately and they
> just take up track space that could be used by real (that is freight)
> trains.
>
> Barry Campbell

Firstly, my apologies for the lateness of posting this reply, but I have been
away on holidays and for work - but I CANNOT let this reply go without
commenting on it.

Overnight trains CAN work in Australia - and not just for low value backpackers
either.

I used to work in the travel industry, and had a large corporate client base,
often travelling between Sydney and Melbourne. These people did not care what
they paid (within reason) for travel costs, as long as it was reliable. They
often had early meetings in Melbourne, which necessitated flying down the night
before and paying for exorbitant hotel costs. The alternative was catching the
first flight of the morning (6.15am) to allow for Sydney Airport's woeful
reliability (and even then, they did not get there in time on occasions). In
order to get this flight, they had to be at the airport no later then 5.45am,
which meant timing arrival by about 5.30am, again to allow for delays. This
often meant leaving homeat around 4.30am, which meant waking up at around
3.30am-4am. So by the time the 9am meeting had commenced, our businessman had
been awake for almost 6 hours - great stuff!

I have advocated for a long time (and the corporate clients agree with me) that
an overnight sleeping train (1900 departure - 0700 arrival) with the same fares
as a business class airfare (approx. $300) with dinner and breakfast included
would be very attractive to the corporate clients. They could get a full nights
sleep, shower in the morning, relax in a lounge car, do some work in their
sleeping berth if desired. They could basically arrived refreshed.

The 'Southern Aurora' was not utilised in its later years, I hear you say! True
- but the times were atrocious (0900 arrival - way too late), the carriages were
old (nothing wrong with that - but they looked their age - plenty wrong with
that!) and the service was not marketed properly. A deal would need to be tied
up with Ansett or QANTAS so that tickets were interchangeable (if a meeting
finished at lunch instead of at 5.30, the passenger could return home straight
away), but this should not be a problem. If properly marketed in publications
like Business Review Weekly and the Financial Review, this service could become
popular - but that is why it will NEVER happen!

Regards

David Proctor
daproc@bigfoot.com

dont use the reply function - it will not work, im not on my own computer!