Re: Sydney-Adelaide services

[Peter Ware <pware@ozemail.com.au>]

Bob wrote:

> The only reason Countrylink run to Broken Hill is that they were forced to
> start this service by politicians after an election promise. They don't have
> suitable rollingstock to run an Adelaide service and the stock that is running
> on the Broken Hill / Griffith service is from cars that were to be sold but
> were set aside for historical purposes. If anyone could run a service from
> Sydney to Adelaide it would be Great Southern but it would seem to me that
> there wouldn't be too many passengers for such a service. The present Broken
> Hill service may not last too much after the next state election.
> Bob

  I was on the service about two weeks ago - during the first week of the school
holidays. Two cars one about 2/3rds full the other just over half full. That may
have been just school holiday traffic and some of the passengers were undoubtedly
pensioners on their reduced fare ticket, but how many passengers does it need to
be viable? The vast majority of passangers got on at Orange (from the Dubbo XPT)
and got off at BH - a few even got off at Darrick (spelling?) in the middle of
nowhere between Menindee and BH.

Peter Ware