Sydney-sider Phil Buckley is a rail enthusiast and also a regular passenger across NSW on passenger trains including the Xplorer, Endeavour, and XPT.

He recently launched an online campaign to increase the number of journeys each week on the Broken Hill to Sydney route. Below, he lays out the reason why enhancing the frequencies per week of passenger rail to the region would be good for the economy, tourism, our roads, and our environment.

For more information on his campaign, go to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3trainsaweektobrokenhill/

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OPINION BY PHIL BUCKLEY

Why are so many NSW TrainLink journeys on coaches?

I am a frequent train traveller around NSW and have travelled from Sydney to Broken Hill and return for many years. However, NSW TrainLink can only find funding for one train each way each week for the line from Orange to Broken Hill. The other six days, anyone going to Broken Hill or returning to Sydney must catch a cramped road coach for at least some of the journey such as Broken Hill to Dubbo or Condobolin to Wagga.

The key problem is one of political attitude. Since the Greiner Government of the late 1980s and even before then, our leaders have not been committed to providing regional rail services to western NSW. Passenger trains from Dubbo to Bourke and Cobar were removed in 1975 and replaced with buses.

With Broken Hill having only one train each week as of 2026 – arriving on a Monday and returning east on a Tuesday – the problem is obvious. In rare cases, as seen in October 2026, the Broken Hill Xplorer was operated with five carriages instead of two, due to passenger demand. However, the NSW Xplorer train fleet is currently too small to increase services.

Services would otherwise have to be cancelled on other lines such as Griffith (only two trains a week), Moree to Armidale (one train a day), or Canberra (three a day).

So, on average, most of western NSW only gets one train a day each way, with a few more run by the Bathurst Bullet while Victoria Pass is rebuilt and about numerous outer urban/regional trains a day from Lithgow.

Compare this to Sydney, where many stations have a train every five, ten, or 15 minutes. Simply put, country NSW residents and visitors are being treated as second-class passengers.

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Will the new “R-Set” fleet help?

The Xplorer fleet is stretched very thin already, with no funding in the works for more additional regional stock bar the 29 new “R-Set” train fleet planned for regional fleet operations. Even with new trains, this is still not large enough to expand on the current TfNSW (Transport for NSW) fleet comprised of XPT, Xplorer, and Endeavour sets, as these current trains will be retired at some point.

While TfNSW has plans to “refresh” the XPTs for an extra 10–15 years, these already don’t cover the far west of NSW and are restricted to the key Dubbo, Brisbane, and Melbourne routes. In a recent mid-year parliamentary hearing, the NSW Regional Transport Minister, Jenny Aitchison, and TfNSW department staff suggested the Xplorer/Endeavour train fleet may also get a life extension, but even with extension of the 33-year-old Xplorer fleet’s life, TfNSW is still severely limited in its ability to expand regional services.

In reality, the NSW Government planning for regional rail needs has, since the 1990s for the far west of NSW, relied on the heavy use of limited coaches in regional NSW that run only once a day. These coaches a problem in themselves as can carry a total of average 60 people versus a two-car train set which can easily transport nearly two times that number in far better comfort.

Coaches are also not suitable for a range of people who are disabled, mobility-impaired, over-height, elderly, suffer motion sickness, and more. Coaches also add to transport pressures on our roads with a $5.7 billion annual road trauma bill that at times has included bus crashes.

Passenger trains, however, are rarely involved in serious accidents with decades between events as opposed to thousands of road crashes a year.

Exacerbating this ... is the fact that funding for NSW passenger rail services to far-western NSW, has declined steadily since the 1980s. The former well-known Silver City Comet operated successfully from the 1930s as a fast train that ran mostly from Orange to Broken Hill and back as a daily service, reduced to three times a week when cancelled in the late 1980s. Somewhere between the Silver City Comet ending and the Xplorer beginning, passenger services dropped to once a week, showing the NSW Government viewed the needs of far-west NSW voters and tourists as requiring the bare minimum.

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How getting more trains is possible

Up to 2019, a strong public campaign was mounted in Griffith to get a second weekly Xplorer train which, after many years campaigning, was funded by TfNSW. However, this second Xplorer is understood that it has to be taken off the other regional routes for the Griffith run to happen and if any Xplorer breaks there no easy way to go get another one as there aren’t any large fleet to get a spare train from. This problem dates to the 1990s when the NSW Government didn’t order enough new regional trains for NSW voters and tourists needs.

What we need now in 2026, is for NSW politicians to start listening, fund TfNSW to get more new trains for the far west of NSW, so we can get an extra two services: ideally on Wednesdays/Thursdays and Friday/Saturdays to run to the west and back. With some commonsense, these additional trains would increase tourism, remove people off the dangerous roads, and reduce rising fuel impacts costs.