There’s numerous ways to get from Sydney to Melbourne, you can drive your own car via a choice of routes, fly, take a bus or there’s also the train. With the cost of flights so low particularly if you’ve booked in advance and got a special, flying is for sure the quickest and most popular means. But there’s times when train is the perfect solution whether it be due to a hatred of flying, wanting to see the countryside, a love of rail travel or in many cases for health reasons.
Normally my choice would be to fly, but this time round for my trip to Melbourne I chose the train and this is my review.
There’s a choice of two trains running between Sydney and Melbourne either a day service or a night service. The day service departs in the morning arriving in Southern Cross station in Melbourne late at night, the night service, as you’d expect, leaves at night arriving into Melbourne in the morning.
Obviously if you want to see the countryside the day service is the choice, but if your travelling or holidaying, or your not familiar with Melbourne and don’t want to arrive late at night you may choose the night service. For many people the night service also saves the cost of a nights accommodation.
I booked the tickets online via the http://www.countrylink.info website and theres three choices for tickets being economy, first class and first class sleeper. At the time I booked the cost of the tickets where 90, 130 and 210 respectively. After a little research online apparently there isn’t much difference between first class seating and economy so I went with the economy option. More about the seat/class differences later.
I booked the tickets online and being unable to print them out it was just a simple matter of going to the Countrylink ticket office at Central Station in the heart of Sydney and they happily printed out boarding passes. The train departs from platform 1 wheres there’s a waiting room with some soft chairs and a toilet.
Sydneys Central station has an old world charm about it, but if your in a rush it doesn’t have much in the way of nearby shopping if say you want to buy a pillow or snacks/drinks at fair price. If you want to take some snacks probably best to buy them at a supermarket prior to travel. There’s two newsagents there with papers and mags, a Hungry Jacks, Krispy Kreme Donuts, a coffee shop and a couple of other light food stalls. Down one level at the opposite end to platform one there’s a small pedestrian street with more small restaurant/ take aways, a bakery (cant remember the name but it was good value compared to everything else, tasty too) and a overpriced mini-mart.
The train was late arriving which is apperantly par for course. Our luggage was carry on, and theres plenty of space on the overhead storage for a couple of backpacks and laptop bags. If your’ve got large suitcases you can check them in and I beleive there stored in the rear carriage.
The economy seats are not too uncomfortable, but there not exactly made for sleeping on. The seat reclines and there’s plenty of legroom, as a comparison it’s marginally more comfortable than many of the budget airlines. As for the first class seats, it’s hard to tell the difference, one seat I looked at appeared to be a little softer and maybe reclined back further than the economy seats.
Economy seating
A single first class seat (normally they are two seats, side by side)
An interesting feature about the seating is that some seats can be rotated so that it’s facing the seat behind, great for a group of four or small family.
Our seat was one of the seats that swivels around and was a little loose, whenever the guy behind put his feet on the footrest the seat jarred forward or back. That’s no fun so fortunately there was plenty of empty seats and the conductor had no issues with us moving to a better seat.
Later on the trip the overhead lights go out, I think it was after 10, there was also a vacant seat beside us, so I jumped in that one so we could both stretch out a little more and try to get some sleep. Luckily we had the foresight to bring a light blanket and a couple of pillows which made things a little more comfortable.
The train also has a buffet which has hot meals prepared on order, sandwiches, muffins, chocolate bars and the like. For drinks they make a reasonable coffee, tea, hot chocolate plus plenty of cold drinks like water, orange juice, coke and the like. Prices for the hot meals seemed reasonable at $9 and coffee for $3.50 but we had brought our own.
the food buffet
the selection of cold goods available
In the morning hot raisin toast is available along with hot ham and cheese croissants.
The train pulled into Southern Cross station about 40 minutes late which apparently happens a bit, luckily we didn’t book any immediate onward transfers…