Staff unavailability for V/Line service from Melbourne to Albury resulted in passengers sitting on floor

The 12.04pm V/Line service from Melbourne was reduced from a six to three carriage train due to unforeseen staff unavailability, which meant around 50 people didn't have an allocated seat and had to sit or stand the whole way to Albury.

Some customers resorted to sitting on luggage racks.

An additional coach was ordered to support the service, which departed from Southern Cross Station and also stopped to collect passengers at Broadmeadows, with further stops along the line to Albury as required.

In making an assessment on the number of additional coaches to order, V/Line said it checked the number of pre-purchased tickets for a service and the number of passengers who have recently travelled on a service.

"We apologise to passengers and thank them for their understanding after the lunchtime Albury service yesterday (on Sunday) had to run with fewer carriages than scheduled," V/Line executive director of operations Rochelle Reynolds said.

"We'll continue to regularly review patronage levels to ensure we have appropriate alternative arrangements in place during unplanned service changes."

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Thurgoona resident Ray Wilson travelled home on the service and described it as "third world" given people had paid money to sit on the floor.

Mr Wilson went to Melbourne to watch Collingwood take on Fremantle in the AFL semi-final and knew there was going to be issues before boarding for the return trip.

"When I booked on the Tuesday, they said they couldn't give me reserved seats because they were all taken, so they knew at that time they had a big train coming," he said.

"When I got to the station and saw this train come around the corner with only three carriages and I looked at the amount of people waiting to get on the train, I knew it wasn't going to work. It was an absolute debacle.

"I think we all know what V/Line is like, but the amount of people they were just laughing and saying 'if you don't laugh, you'll cry' was incredible.

"It was absolutely third world. You pay your money and then there's not a seat for you.

"We can't let this sort of thing go because it's just not acceptable."

Border Rail Action Group representative John Dunstan would like to see more seating provided on a consistent basis.

"Whenever they have carriages out for maintenance, they haven't got enough to run a six-carriage service for every one of our services a day," he said.

"The answer is for the Victorian government to order another six-car train set.

"These three carriages should also have a lot more seats on them, they've only got 150 seats and there's an awful lot of wasted spare space."

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