VLOCITY trains could return to the North East line this weekend after suffering wheel damage, a Victorian government minister says.
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Jaclyn Symes was speaking after having a briefing on Thursday morning from transport officials on the state of the new rolling stock.
VLocity carriages were pulled from service last week after indentations were found on wheels on their right side facing south.
"It's pretty sure that the cause will be somewhere on the track, it could be just a matter of a couple of millimetres that has caused friction or a strike in relation to the wheels," Ms Symes said.
"So the wheels will be repaired while the investigations continue.
"There's four sites that have been identified none of them confirmed to be the specific site that might be the cause of this, it will more than likely come down to one site.
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"All of those sites have been identified on ARTC tracks, so it is an infrastructure issue that has impacted the wheels of the train."
Ms Symes said footage of the wheels recorded on the test run was being scrutinised and if the exact trouble spot was identified quickly "we should have the trains back by the weekend".
Asked when next month the entire old N Class fleet would be replaced by VLocitys, Ms Symes said she had been told mid-July.
"The issue there is that the buffet car is ready on one of the trains and that's the train that I saw last week (being fitted out in Melbourne), but the way they are run with the staff is that you have to have two buffet cars because the staff member gets on at Melbourne, the staff member gets on at Albury and they swap at Seymour so they go back home," Ms Symes said.
"That's how the rostering works so you've got to have two buffet cars in operation for it to open."
There was a win for long-suffering North East travellers yesterday with the 1980s N Class locomotives used to fill services after buses replaced trains for most departures in recent days.
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