PASSENGERS travelling through the North-East have been left less than impressed by scheduled trains being replaced by coaches on Tuesday morning.
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The four locomotives serving the North-East have “experienced unforeseen faults,” a V-Line spokesperson said on Monday, which had caused a high number of disruptions over the last week.
John Sheehan, from Melbourne, said he was unlikely to use V-Line to travel interstate again.
He had started his journey from Melbourne to Canberra expecting to be on a train to Albury, before transferring to a coach from the Border to the capital.
“We'd been on the train for 15 minutes before we were told we'd have to change platforms to a different train,” he said.
“We were meant to leave at 7:05, but the train only pulled out at 7:11, we got clear of the station and then stopped again for another five or 10 minutes.
“We got to Seymour and were told you could sit anywhere on the coach, but we'd pre-booked allocated seats.
“It'll be the last time I ever travel on V-Line – I don’t know if there were any tourists on the bus, but what a great representation of our public transport system, of interstate transport.
“I hope we get the train from Albury to Melbourne on the way back, I'm not in a mood to go through this again.
“I'm certainly going to ring them up when I get home and give them a blast, it's just not good enough.”
Fellow traveller from Melbourne, Rachel Jones, who was on her way to Corryong, said not knowing for sure whether services would be a train or a coach could be problematic.
“It's a bit of a pain, I would have preferred for it to be a train,” she said.
“I only bought my ticket on Monday, when my boyfriend looked at it he thought it was going to be a coach the whole way, then it changed again (in Tuesday) morning.
“It's a bit frustrating – fortunately my connection wasn't until two o’clock, but if it had been earlier it would have been a problem.”
Ella from Queensland, who asked for her surname to be withheld, said V-Line should consider sending a notification via text message when changes were made to booked services.
She wasn't fazed by the train being replaced by the coach, but said people should be notified if it does happen.
“I'm a seasoned traveller, so you should expect anything at any time,” she said.
“But in this day and age, you should be able to send passengers a message if something like this happens.
“It's something they should look into when you book a ticket.”
V-Line operates a Twitter account to keep passengers updated about services, but Ella said she hadn't had time to go online before the train left early this morning.
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