Save the Overland (Part 1)

Vintage poster for the Overland showing the old VR livery (via PROV)

The Overland has a long and storied history. The service began in 1887 with the completion of the Melbourne-Adelaide railway, though it wasn't called "The Overland" till the 1930s. It was originally run jointly by the Victorian and South Australian governments, with the South Australian portion being taken over by Australian National Railways in the 1970s, the Victorian government dropping out in the 1990s and the service privatised and sold to the Great Southern Rail company shortly after (note that GSR has recently been renamed "Journey Beyond"). Originally an overnight service with sleeper cars, it now runs as a conventional daylight service.

The Overland has been run by a private firm since the 1990s (source)

In the years since privatisation, the quality of the service has slowly declined. Originally running once per direction per day, this was reduced to five services each direction per week in 1998, four per week in 2000, three per week in 2007, and two per week in 2013. It has also required government subsidies to prop it up; recently, this consisted of a joint funding agreement between the SA and Victorian governments, however in 2018 the SA government did not renew their funding and it seemed as though the service might cease altogether. At the last minute, the Victorian government stepped up to meet the shortfall, and keep the Overland running till the end of 2019. That funding runs out quite soon, and while the SA opposition are fighting for their government to resume the subsidy, it doesn't look good - and there's no guarantee the Victorian government will pick up the tab again.

One of Melissa Horne's first media releases as Minister for Public Transport was to fund the Overland (cropped from)

So why has the service struggled so much?

Part of the problem is that - unlike many other passenger rail services in the state, which are seeing continuous year-on-year growth - the Overland has entered a death spiral. There aren't very many passengers, which makes it hard to justify running the train every day. So you run the train slightly less often, to save costs. But running the train less often makes it less useful; some of your leisure travellers aren't in much of a rush, so they don't mind going on Tuesday instead of Monday, but utility travellers - people using it to get to work, or school, or anything where they have to be there on a particular day - might not have a train running on the day they want to travel. So they don't take the train - they fly or drive instead. Which means the passenger numbers keep falling, revenue keeps falling, and you need to cut the number of services even further...which in turn makes the passenger numbers drop even further. Which is how you get from a twice-daily service to a twice-weekly service in just fifteen years.

The Overland is hauled by relatively old, slow locomotives

The other big problem is that the Overland is slow. It is a very old-school locomotive-hauled service, with locos and carriages that haven't been updated for decades, running on tracks that were designed for freight trains (and indeed sharing track space with freight trains). Since the interstate railway line was Standardised in the mid-1990s, it also has to kind of go the long way; originally in the Broad Gauge days, the Overland took the most direct route to Adelaide and went via Ballarat. However when they were doing the interstate line in the 1990s, they weren't keen for the extremely long and heavy interstate freight trains to have to handle the steep grades around the hills of Bacchus Marsh, so instead they made the interstate Standard Gauge line go via northern Geelong, then across the plains to Ararat, where it rejoined the original interstate line. This diversion adds around 55km to the trip to Adelaide - completely worthwhile for the freight trains to avoid the hills, but not so much for the relatively nimble Overland, which had no trouble with the hills but is now even less time-competitive with driving or flying than it was before.

The Overland's current route in black (adapted from Wikimedia Commons)

Partly as a consequence of the above, the Overland is to some extent framed as a "cruise" train, like Journey Beyond's other trains, the Indian Pacific and the Ghan. Unless you meet a very rare profile (origin or destination is halfway along the route, and happens to be running at the right time and day) it's not going to be very competitive for utilitarian travel, so the people who ride it are mostly holidaymakers who want the joy of travelling by train, and don't care much about the slow travel or the infrequent services.

The Indian Pacific is basically a cruise ship on wheels; it can afford to be infrequent

The IP and the Ghan are similarly slow and infrequent...but of course that's about where the similarities end. The IP and the Ghan are proper cruise ships on wheels - comfortable, luxurious, glamorous, travelling through some of the most incredible scenery on the planet - whereas the Overland just ain't. It's more comfortable than a long-distance V/Line train (and a lot more comfortable than flying) but it is at heart a basic passenger train, travelling through fairly generic bushland. Don't get me wrong - I took it a few years ago and I loved it. But I'm a train nerd, and running a train that caters solely to train nerds is not a particularly good business model.

A Red Premium (ie First Class) carriage on the Overland (via Wikimedia Commons)

Unless something fairly dramatic changes, it's likely the Overland's death spiral will continue. It will continue to require government subsidies to run, and may require higher subsidies as the years go on; it doesn't seem likely that governments on either side of the border will be willing to keep those going forever. But we need to remember that the Overland's long slow decline has shadowed a decline in regional passenger rail services throughout Victoria and the rest of Australia. It really goes back a long way, arguably to World War II, but for a very long time the vast majority of rail services were in decline - the same death spiral of passenger losses leading to service cuts leading to more passenger losses.

V/Line's passenger numbers keep growing year on year (via V/Line)

But then in the early 21st century, Victoria started to invest in its railways again - and it has been a resounding success. Trains became faster, more comfortable and more frequent - and people flocked to them. Now we see V/Line's passenger numbers growing exponentially, and the government is finding it hard to keep up with the growth - they're investing more and more to cope with the numbers of people using the trains, which is helping encourage even more people to use them. But the Overland has not seen this same kind of investment - which is precisely why its passenger numbers keep falling.

If we want to save the Overland, it needs the same kind of strategic vision, and the investment to make that vision a reality. So what kind of vision do we need? Part 2 here.