My God, the Nationals are in favour!

 A report in today's Guardian, that the Nationals are broadly in favour of an upgrade to the Sydney Melbourne line, with tilt trains and the like, as I reported previously.

If so, this is quite a turn around.

Just before COVID struck, and in the wake of the Wallan XPT derailment, I wrote to our local Federal MP, Helen Haines, about the poor state of the track and its impact on the reliability of the service.

I wrote to our Federal, and not our State MP as the track is operated by the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) which is a Federal entity.

Helen Haines raised my concerns with Michael McCormack, who was Federal Infrastructure Minister, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, and incidentally MP for Wagga.

This is the reply I received

Now, to be fair to Michael McCormack, I only raised my concerns about the performance of the Albury Melbourne V/Line service and not the NSW Trainlink Sydney Melbourne service.

However, I think the tone of the letter suggests that at that time the Nationals were not invested in the idea of an improvement to the overall passenger service.

As always this is complicated as it's the states that run the passenger services and, in this case, the Federal goverment that runs the track ...