Extra V/Line train services announced on Albury-Melbourne line

From Saturday, July 1, there will be an additional Saturday morning service from Albury to Melbourne and a Sunday afternoon service from the capital back to the Border.

The announcement was welcomed by Benambra MP Bill Tilley and met with cautious approval by the Border Rail Action Group which said it hoped the move was not a "Band-Aid" solution to overcrowding problems on the route that had been ignored for many years.

The extra trains will operate over July and August.

A Victorian government spokesman could not confirm whether the services would remain beyond winter.

He said the extra services would be closely monitored and were in response to the huge surge in passenger numbers - more than 20 per cent - since April.

"The regional fare cap is proving extremely popular with Albury line passengers, particularly on weekends so we're responding to demand by providing an extra service on Saturdays and Sundays," the spokesman said.

"We have been closely monitoring patronage and exploring all possible options over many weeks and these two extra weekend services will give our Albury line passengers more options to get to and from Melbourne."

More than 93,000 trips have been taken on the Albury-Melbourne route since the introduction of the regional fare cap on March 31, with weekend services proving to be the most popular, especially among football fans.

The new Saturday service will depart Albury at 9.05am, arriving at Southern Cross at 12.55pm.

On Sundays an additional train will depart Southern Cross at 2.33pm, arriving in Albury at 6.16pm.

Subject to fleet availability, the additional services will operate as three-carriage trains.

All other weekend services will run as currently scheduled with their carriage configuration and departure times as they appear on current timetables.

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Mr Tilley said the new runs were "a win for bipartisan and commonsense politics".

He has lobbied Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll since January, after hearing of crowding woe from rail insiders and patrons.

"The minister accepted the situation was untenable and those details and stories reinforced the need for change," Mr Tilley said.

"This is a first, important step to making sure we don't have people standing or sitting on the carriage floors of a train doing 130kmh.

"It may need to be tweaked but we will know more in time."

Border Rail Action Group's John Dunstan said he was sure the extra services would be well-received, especially on busy football weekends, but said they did not address the core problem.

"Quite simply, the route needs more trains, it needs more than just three-carriage configurations but I do understand that V/Line has its hands tied," Mr Dunstan said.

"We're very happy that they are making some initial moves to put additional services on at the weekend which is when the worst of the overcrowding occurs.

"This trial, and that's how we see it, a trial, could just be a Band-Aid improvement. A real improvement would be for the Victorian government to provide additional carriages, VLocity carriages to add to their fleet on this important line."

Mr Dunstan said V/Line was at the mercy of government funding to make the service the best it could be.

"We are aware that V/Line is operating on a limited ability to provide extra services because they have to allow for maintenance shutdowns, maintenance withdrawals and at the moment they don't have that much room to move," he said.

"If something breaks down, then they're going to be back to splitting the thing in half and just having three carriages on the route which history shows is not enough.

"The Victorian government should be actively looking at ordering another six carriages for the line, that'll be a much more permanent solution to the problem."

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