It is impossible to think after more than $500 million has been spent on track upgrades and millions more on new VLocity trains, Warrnambool’s rail service could be worse than what we have endured for past decades.
This is exactly was has occurred on the Warrnambool Railway Line but the issue is not an isolated one.
The idea the replacement of comfortable longer distance regional trains was never considered by V/Line to be an upgrade but an opportunity to prosecute a poorly designed and delivered rolling stock strategy. V/Line have been wanting to remove the longer distance rolling stock from the network for years and were desperate to invent ways to make it happen.
Despite V/line being very aware the Vlocity trains are not firt for longer distance purposes (this is why they developed the Albury SG design for longer distance running) they proceeded to convince politicians it was good for Warrnambool and Bairnsdale. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
So the plan began to spend hundreds of millions on track upgrades to allow a poorly designed, out of date and older designed Vlocity train to run to Warrnambool knowing full well this was a mistake.
V/Line do not have a care in the world about passenger comfort, they will make you stand for 3 hours and fight for seats on what eould be a fully designed proper regional service.
How could the head of Rolling Stock Management and Development at the government not have known about the consequences of placing inferior and outdated rolling stock onto a service V/Line called an upgrade? This could be a new low for the government and for V/Line.
What is abundantly clear is the lack of performance and care to the travelling public and over reliance on Vlocity trains already 25+ years old as a design. The lack of planning on newer regional rolling stock shows complete contempt and appaling mismanagement by the rolling stock manager at the government.
This change to Vlocity trains for regional services marketed as an upgrade was a complete lie and is on par with putting lipstick on a PIG!
