{"id":164614,"date":"2025-01-07T05:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T19:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=164614"},"modified":"2025-01-07T17:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T07:13:14","slug":"warrnambool-train-service-is-a-shambles-so-whats-the-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=164614","title":{"rendered":"Warrnambool train service is ‘a shambles’ so what’s the solution?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All we want for Christmas…are more seats on our trains according to the people of Warrnambool and the state government and the local member for Warrnambool has sought to do the complete opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As foreshadowed in previous news items the Warrnambool Service has been made a mess under the Management of V\/Line<\/a>. Early and unecessary withdrawal of the N set longer distance service rolling stock (caused by a deliberate lack of maintenance) has caused significant damage<\/a> to what was a reliable service.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Warrnambool service arrives at Southern Cross<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For over 18 months the local council had been calling for Vlocity Trains to grace the line without understanding or knowledge of what a backward step this was going to be. Well be careful what you wish for because now you have a very substandard service from a substandard management team running a substandard operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Local State Member for Warrnambool<\/a> defended what has been a disastrous change to the rolling stock on the line stating there would not be a loss of seats, that turned out to be a blatant fib.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of seats on each Vlocity service has fallen by over 100 seats per service<\/a> where a short journey Vlocity train has replaced a longer distance comfortable N set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vlocity trains should be immediately withdrawn from the Warrnambool Line and N sets with loco hauled services be restored with urgent maintenance undertaken by the operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are plenty of news items on how poorly managed the Warrnambool Service has been coupled with the mismanagement of rolling stock<\/a> maintenance. This change to make services less customer friendly and less appealing to passengers after the loss of similar services to Bairnsdale also met with extremely annoyed customers of long haul V\/Line services has not been received well by the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Management at V\/Line seem incapacable of understanding the implications and impacts of their poor decision making. The CEO should be immediately questioned on the decisions currently being made and the board of directors (it would seem a very inexperienced bunch when it comes to rail service operation), should take a first hand look at the issues they have created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact a shorter train with less seats, cramped seating, noisy internal engine noise, no on train catering and ironing board seats that are very uncomfortable have replaced the longer and more comfortable N sets is a disgrace. The N sets on the Warrnambool Line ran a 5 car set but a Vlocity can only be run on a 3 car set (current configuration) due to platform lengths not supporting a train longer than 5 cars. The Vlocity sets could be configured for a 3+2 setup but V\/Line Management would not want to implement this arrangement and they probably could not get their head around it. In any case the change should never have been made to Bairnsdale and Warrnambool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why would V\/Line proceed to remove the 5 car N sets from the service knowing full well this would create overcrowding and a substandard service for passengers?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This knowledge at V\/line should have been enough to ensure 5 car sets remained on the Warrnambool line until a better longer distance service platform could have been tendered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it is now clear to all concerned V\/Line have no idea and no plan for longer distance services and those responsible for this terrible series of decisions should be held accountable<\/strong>. Further, a new long distance rolling stock plan should be immediate drafted and tenders for the carriages issued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo Above: A VLocity train sprints along the Warrnambool line. Picture by Eddie Guerrero<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Local State Member for Warrnambool defended what has been a disastrous change to the rolling stock on the line stating their would not be a loss of seats, that turned out to be a blatant fib.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":164625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,186,181],"tags":[993,8,9949,12964],"class_list":["post-164614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rail-news","category-v-line","category-vlocity","tag-melbourne","tag-victoria","tag-warrnambool","tag-warrnambool-line"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164614"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164793,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164614\/revisions\/164793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/164625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}