Monday, April 18, 2005

After an uneventful morning journey on the 5.28am to Melbourne, I made the mistake of rushing to catch the 16.40 service back to Geelong in the afternoon.

It was the same old story, no locomotive attached to the carriages, which definitely precludes one from expecting a departure at approximately the scheduled time.

We ended up being about 15 minutes late or so. Which is not an unusual occurance for V/Line services.

Of course the propoganda that V/Line and our State Government churn out is that everything will be better once the VFT is implemented.

The question is when will our Geelong line be graced with the mystical beast known as the Very Fast Train? The amazing $76 million investment of our taxes into a modern 21st century transportation system is as yet nowhere to be seen after almost two and half years of disruption and about 10 weeks worth of line closures.

My sources tell me that Geelong commuters should not hold their collective breaths. Apparently there are still further upgrades to the track near Corio that are not even scheduled yet and the emergency braking system for the trains that has to be linked into the signal system is still not installed.

Don't quote on me this, but I have heard that the V'Locity trains will not be seen on the Geelong line for at least another year.

Although, I'm not sure why I'm too disappointed. After all, $76 million is only going to save 5 minutes at most.

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