I’ve been catching the TrainLink to Sydney from the New South Wales New England region for years. You could call it our best-kept secret, but in truth we’ve kept it too well: very few northern New Englanders travel on our daily coach and train service.
It also feels slightly subversive actually using the public transport already available to us instead of weighing in to the bitter debate about reopening the northernmost stretch of the old Great Northern Railway to passenger trains at a cost of up to $2bn. Those trains stopped 35 years ago, and plans to build cycle-friendly rail trails on the disused tracks are under way, but for a loud contingent of train-loving locals that’s the only rail worth talking about.
My most recent 10-hour TrainLink journey to the city started at 6.20am with boarding a coach at Deepwater. This bus service replaced trains between Armidale and Tenterfield and I’ve never experienced it more than half full. Numbers usually lift on the Xplorer waiting at Armidale railway station, yet even in school holidays my carriage departed mostly empty.
As we approached Uralla I tuned into a conversation about high ticket costs. My peak return fare of $200 was about a third of the average flight from Armidale to the city – before Rex’s current woes. That’s comparable to what the trip would cost me in fuel and, judging by the chatter, I wasn’t the only passenger doing the sums.
Soaring air fares during the height of the pandemic saw a boom in demand for regional train bookings, but now an interstate flight from Sydney to Melbourne costs much the same as an intercity train – as little as $90-$100 one way. Watch it, though, because while some intercity routes make regional stops, rural residents can be subject to “amended timetables”.
In Victoria, the train is the cheapest option by far: in 2023 the state government capped fares on its regional VLine services at the maximum daily fare for metro trains, currently $9.20.
As the beautiful hill country around Woolbrook slid by, the quiet exacerbated the creaking of the old rolling stock, in service for decades. A big stretch of the journey is on a single track along narrow corridors with plenty of bends and beautiful heritage bridges, punctuated by the driver reminding us that this ageing infrastructure makes progress slow. It’s also notoriously difficult to get a mobile phone signal.
Even so, I love this journey through the rural country I’ve known since childhood.
The carriage almost filled in Tamworth. A hot lunch from the buffet accompanied the valley views as we trundled down to Murrurundi. Plenty of passengers had packed their own, possibly to defray the higher ticket cost.
It’s not until we hit the Hunter Valley with its duplicated tracks that the Xplorer achieves a constant speed, and we pulled into Sydney’s Central station just before 5pm.
My trip was among more than a million made each year on regional TrainLink train/coach services, up 3% on pre-Covid levels. But that data masks a litany of delays in the new regional rail fleet stretching back as long as I’ve travelled this route.
The ageing rolling stock featured in the 2023 state election campaign, before the Minns government announced it would honour the contract for replacement trains under a deal with the Spanish construction company engaged by the Coalition. The $2.8 bn rollout will see the creaky regional Xplorers retired.
Construction is “under way” but there was only a hint of the projected 2026 completion date in a slightly unrelated update earlier this year.
As I headed home days later I was quietly thrilled to board a coach at Sydney central bound for Muswellbrook, due to scheduled trackwork. We arrived at the Upper Hunter town well before the train was due to depart, but thanks to one late bus in the convoy our lead got squandered. As we headed for the hills 90 minutes behind schedule, indignant talk turned to, “I reckon I’ll just drive next time.”
At Tamworth, the train almost emptied, leaving us stalwarts from the far north to chug up the ranges to Armidale. While staff cleaned onboard toilets and turned seats around for tomorrow’s Sydney service, I pondered whether I’d still recommend riding the rattler.
If my husband and I were both travelling, there’s no argument that two tanks of fuel would be far cheaper than two train fares, even at off-peak rates, so the train experience would need to out-compete driving a lot more than it currently does.
This rural public transport dilemma is fuelled by the struggle to maintain regional airlines, but where does it sit in a state committed to lowering carbon emissions?
The Victorian regional train fare cap was a measure to get cars off the road, although it resulted in overcrowding. Brisbane’s current 50c train fare cap trial extends to regional cities such as the Gold Coast and Ipswich. But the only change in NSW appears to be talk about whether the $2.50 senior’s fare is sustainable.
By the time 10 of us boarded the bus north to Tenterfield, with only four continuing beyond Glen Innes, I got the usual stark reminder that public transport is a numbers game.
There were 2,670 tickets sold between Armidale and Tenterfield from 2021-2024, 12 of them from my household. A petition signed by some 10,000 people (including 7,000 northern tablelands residents) supporting the return of passenger and freight trains north of Armidale suggests there is more demand. However, the Minns government has no plan to reopen that train route, and rail trails are in the pipeline thanks to funding secured by federal member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, in 2021.
Almost 12 hours after boarding in Sydney, as the lights of Deepwater came into view, I had to admit that I still prefer public transport to driving, despite the bumpy ride.
Even when our old rattler runs late and half-empty, the glass is more than half-full for those of us actually supporting the service.
