They should have been retired by now. Here’s why we’re stuck with XPTs

An increase in the frequency of passenger rail services between Canberra and Sydney, as well as other long-distance routes in NSW, is being stymied by a lack of trains in the state government’s fleet and long delays to new orders.

Passengers have the choice of just three services per day between Sydney and Canberra in each direction, which has been unchanged for decades. The 320-kilometre journey takes more than four hours by train, compared with about three hours by car.

The XPT trains have been running since the early ’80s.Credit: iStock

Years-long delays to the rollout of new intercity trains, as well as Spanish-built regional trains, have forced the NSW government to keep decades-old fleets in service for longer. Up to $40 million is now being spent on upgrading the XPT fleet, which was originally meant to be retired by 2023.

Regional Transport Minister Jenny Aitchison said the state government did not have enough trains for extra services on the Sydney-Canberra route, blaming its Coalition predecessor for delays to the new fleets.

“We just don’t have rolling stock to put on additional trains,” she said in response to questions from Greens MP Cate Faehrmann at a budget estimates hearing last week.

Transport for NSW regional integration head Anthony Hayes said reducing travel times between Sydney and Canberra had been a key priority of a working group established with the ACT government.

“The main priority has not been to look at increasing the number of services; it’s been to try to make the current service perform more efficiently,” he said.

Asked what could be done to reduce travel times, Hayes said it depended on the amount of money the government was willing to spend, noting that sections of the line would require “significant investment” to speed up journeys.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who has long campaigned for improvements to train services between the nation’s capital and Sydney, said a reduction in the journey time, increased frequency and an improved schedule were short-term improvements it was working towards. “New rolling stock on the route would help achieve these objectives,” he said.

The need to remove XPT trains from service to enable them to be upgraded will result in two of six daily rail services between Sydney and Grafton being replaced with coaches at the end of the month for about a year.

NSW TrainLink chief executive Roger Weeks told the hearing that the replacement coach services would enable the XPT fleet upgrade to be accelerated, but he noted that the latter would not boost train capacity.

“The life-extension program [for the XPT fleet] is not going to give us any additional capacity, so we’re not getting extra train sets,” he said. “We have no capacity to increase the number of XPT services that we’re running.”

Quizzed about increasing rail services to Casino and other parts of the Northern Rivers, Aitchison said it was difficult to put on more train services when the existing XPT fleet was at capacity and needed significant work. “The rolling stock issue is a difficult one,” she said.

The first XPTs – which stands for “express passenger trains” – began operating about 43 years ago and carry passengers between Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Dubbo, Grafton and Casino.

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