Since the opening of Regional Rail Link in 2015, the importance of Sunshine as a railway junction has grown, with the four platforms at the rebuilt station being served by a mix of V/Line and suburban train services. However there is one notable exception – V/Line services to and from Bendigo.
In December 2015 I thought that that V/Line was planning to fix this omission, when a sign reading ‘Ballarat / [blanked out] / Geelong Platform 4’ appeared on the station concourse at Sunshine, with ‘Bendigo’ being hidden beneath the brown sticky tape.
!['Ballarat / [blanked out] / Geelong Platform 4' sign for V/Line services at Sunshine](https://railgallery.wongm.com/melbourne-suburban-pids/F113_0445.jpg.html)
However it was not to be – a few weeks later a new sign appeared, with the mention of ‘Bendigo’ having been removed.
One can dream of the day when a quick change between a Ballarat / Geelong and Bendigo train is possible!
Footnote
At Sunshine station it isn’t uncommon for V/Line to dominate the list of next train departures, with their services outnumbering those provided by Metro Trains.
These trains being:
- V/Line: 3 trains an hour to Geelong, and 2 trains an hour to Bacchus Marsh, with every second train continuing to Ballarat.
- Metro Trains: 3 trains an hour to Watergardens, with every second train continuing to Sunbury.
Makes the 20 minute off peak service on the Sunbury line look like a joke, doesn’t it?
I think V Line is worried about passengers using their service for metropolitan travel (in this case, Sunshine-Sunbury). Could there be potential for VLine to provide express metropolitan services?
With the current stopping pattern someone could jump on a Bendigo train at Footscray and jump out at Sunbury.
As for V/Line providing express suburban services, it is a waste of rolling stock to add extra carriages to trains just to carry passengers between Southern Cross and the edge of the suburban area, only for them to be empty from there to the end of the V/Line network.
By the same logic as above, if a V/Line train happens to have spare capacity, then suburban passengers should be allowed to board.
In June 2015 PTV decided to prevent Sunbury passengers from boarding V/Line services to/from the city:
http://www.elliottmidnews.com.au/story/3132197/sunbury-gets-the-boot-vline-passengers-celebrate/
The locals kicked up a stink:
http://www.starweekly.com.au/news/vline-will-not-enforce-sunbury-ban/
PTV ran a workshop on the topic in October:
https://getinvolved.ptv.vic.gov.au/sunbury-public-transport-services
And then in November they dropped their plans:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north-west/plan-to-bar-sunbury-commuters-from-vline-city-services-scrapped/news-story/4eb7920503c65551842165c2f7c25bf5
The same happened at Craigieburn when it was electrified and became metropolitan. No doubt other stations and lines too.
But I’m particularly thinking of the Craigieburn service eventually being extended to Wallan, with new stations added (eg possibly Summerhill) – it will take far too long to travel to the city on a metro service stopping all stations. Even with new stations added, there is unlikely to be express (or limited-express) metropolitan services between Wallan and Broadmeadows, because the stations would still be far apart.
and not one Warnambool service stops at Sunshine but same train stops Wyndham Vale and tarneit this makes no sense
You could possibly justify the Warnrambool train stopping at *one* of those stations in order for passengers to connect with other trains or avoid the trip all the way into Footscray, but stopping at both is ridiculous!