Category: Regional NSW Page 1 of 2

If you’re looking for the official guide you can find it here.

I was encouraged to put together this guide by a mate who recently had cause to take his bike on the train from Sydney to Newcastle and reached out to me to understand the best way to do this. This was pre-Mariyung launch and so I explained that there was a couple of ways to approach this problem but broadly, he had the following options:

Take the XPT – Bad idea – this would require putting your bike in a special cardboard bike box, making a phone call and paying extra money.
Take the V-set – Bad idea – V-Sets have comfy seats and a certain mid-century style but they lack room for bikes. There are bike hooks in one carriage per 4 car set but they can be hard to find in the rush of boarding, are extremely awkward to use and wouldn’t fit his cargo bike anyway.
Take the Oscar – Good idea!

Up until fairly recently Oscars rarely ran north of Wyong but that is no longer the case. Generally, I don’t like spending the 3 hour trip on one because of the narrower and less comfortable seats, but there’s no denying that they have much larger and more usable toilets, wheelchair/pram accessible seating and, crucially, space to park a cargo bike. It’s as simple as wheeling it on and parking it in the vestibule, much as you would on any suburban trainset. Not ideal on trains that are very crowded and have lot of people getting on and off all the time, but perfectly fine for the run up to Newcastle.

The only problem was, how was a layperson like my mate suppose to know all of this AND know before they got the station what kind of rolling stock would be operating the service they were hoping to catch.

Enter ‘The Unofficial Guide to Taking your Bike on the train in NSW’.

At the Station

Before you even think about leaving the house to head on your trip, the first decision you need to make is if you’re going to take your bike with you or leave it at the station. If you’re leaving it at the station, you’ve got three options:

Locking your bike to a standard bike loop – If no bike loops are available, consider a friendly fence post or parking sign. At most stations I wouldn’t recommend doing this overnight.
Locking your bike up in a secure shed – TfNSW have started rolling out secure bike parking. It’s undercover, has 24 hour CCTV and requires swiping a registered opal card to access. I haven’t used these but they seem pretty great and I would definitely give one a go overnight. You can find out where they are and how to register your opal card for access here. I’ve spotted them in the wild at West Ryde and Schofields.
Locking your bike up in a private ‘bike locker’ – These are older and apparently there’s 830 of them across 110 train stations. You might have spotted the big green boxes around and about. These can be privately hired on a month-by-month basis here, which probably isn’t much use unless you’re doing so as part of a regular commute.

Bike Shed and Bike Locker side by side. Credit: TfNSW.

Okay, so you’ve decided to take your bike with you. You’ll be pleased to know that this is free of charge on all Opal accepting train services run by Sydney Trains or NSW Trainlink. Gone are the days of theoretically having to pay a child’s fare for your bike during peak hour!

Next step, getting onto the platform. In days gone by, the CityRail map used to have little wheelchair icons to indicate which stations had a lift (or, presumably, a ramp). That’s gone in the name of legibility so now you’ll have to head to the TfNSW website and look up your train station. Scroll down to accessibility and if it says ‘Lift’ than there is lifted access from the street onto the platform. If not, you’ll probably need to be able to drag your bike up and/or down the stairs but you might get lucky with a ramp (Hi Broadmeadow).

The glorious final iteration of the CityRail network map is cluttered, but you can’t fault it for providing station detail!

Suburban Sydney Trains

If you’re planning on boarding a suburban Sydney Train there really isn’t too much to worry about. Some trains will have slightly more roomy vestibules but all will accommodate you and your bike. There are a couple of standard approaches I’ve witnessed to taking your bike on the train:

Sit in the side facing seats vestibule with your bike in front of you
Stand between the doors holding onto your bike while it rests against a pole
Kickstand the bike upright or secure it to a pole and then sit down in the vestibule

There’s pros and cons to each but I think getting as far away from the doors as possible is going to make your trip more pleasant, particularly if you’re expecting the train to be somewhat crowded.

Sydney Metro

Much the same as taking your bike on Sydney Trains. The first or last doors have some seats that flip up and tend to have a bit more room. Watch out these things can get crammed in peak hour.

Intercity NSW Trains

Okay this is where it gets interesting. The first thing you’ll need to find out is what type of train will be operating your service. The easiest way to do this is to use one of the various trip planning apps. All these apps use the same data feed so just pick one that shows the information you want in a format you like. I personally use and recommend TripView. AnyTrip is also very cool but probably more so for enthusiasts than the casual user. If the trip planning tool you are using doesn’t tell you what kind of train is running your service, pick a different one.

Personally I wouldn’t favour spending three hours on an Oscar, but if you’re travelling with a bike it’s a solid option.

There are about half a dozen different kinds of intercity rolling stock which will affect how you take your bike onboard and how annoying doing so is. You can check out their features and even floorplans on this handy webpage. Here they are in approximate order from worst to best experience:

V-Set (also known as an ‘Intercity train’)

The V-Set is hands down my favourite train. They’re the oldest passenger trains running in NSW dating as far back as 1970 and they ooze mid-century class. I’ve heard them described as the ‘poor-man’s business class’ for the well-padded seats, carpeted walls and coat hooks. Just try to avoid using the bathroom and don’t forget you’ll need to pull the train door open when you’re getting off!

The V-Set might show up in your app of choice as an ‘Intercity train’. They can be found travelling to Newcastle or the Blue Mountains. Expect them to be retired from service by 2026 (although they said that about 2023 and here we are…).

One carriage per 4 cars should have bike hooks. Good luck figuring out which one it is. I haven’t actually used these before but I’ve seen them and it looks hard. Everything on a V-Set is pre-DDA compliance so don’t expect much room to turn around and know that while you’re trying to do anything you’ll be blocking a bunch of other passengers from getting past you.

If I need to ride a V-Set with my bike I usually jump in the first or last door of the train and stay in the vestibule. People can squeeze past as they get on or off the train and there’s no access into the guards compartment so you don’t get through traffic.

Avoid taking your bike on a V-Set if possible and don’t even think about it with a cargo bike, touring bike or anything else oversize.

Endeavour Railcar

The Endeavours can be found on the South Coast Line (south of Kiama), the Hunter Line, the Southern Highlands Line and the Blue Mountains Line if you catch one of two daily Bathurst Bullets in each direction.

Endeavour railcar. Credit: Hugh Llewellyn

These trains lack any seating in the vestibule and have small doors, so they aren’t ideal for bikes. That said, they do have luggage and wheelchair areas that might double as bike parking, but I haven’t used them before so I can’t comment. Thankfully the volumes of passengers getting on and off trips run by endeavours should be very low so if you have to park your bike somewhere it partially blocks people and get up each time the train stops, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Avoid an Endeavour if you can but don’t fret if you can’t.

Hunter Railcar

The Hunter railcars have been plying the Hunter line for almost 20 years and are basically a single deck diesel version of the millennium trains. They’ve got large doors and side seating in the vestibule. Taking your bike on one of these is basically the same as taking it on a suburban train.

Tick. Just like in Sydney!

OSCAR (also known as an H-Set)

The Outer Suburban Railcars were brought in for shorter distance intercity trips that experience high peak demand and needed larger capacity trains. They were originally designed to run to Wollongong and Wyong but can now be found running as far as Newcastle.

They’re from this century so expect wheelchair accessible toilets, automatic doors and side facing seating in the vestibule. Taking your bike on one of these is basically the same as taking it on a suburban train.

Tick. Just like in Sydney!

Mariyung (also known as a D-Set)

The much-delayed new intercity Mariyung trains take their name from the Dharug word for Emu. It’s a clever pun because not only are emus fast and graceful over long distances, but the 3-letter acronym EMU in railway parlance stands for Electric Multiple Unit, the type of train the Mariyung is.

Since December 2024 the Mariyungs are finally in operation. You can find them plying the route between Sydney and Newcastle and they should be rolled out to the Blue Mountains Line to replace the V-Sets in the coming year/s.

A V-Set and Mariyung (right) at Central Station. Credit: Dan Himbrechts

These trains are the crème of the crop, bringing intercity rail transport in NSW into the 2010s! Expect to find USB-A ports, 240V wall sockets and folding tray tables. Unlike on all the other trains listed here, you’ll actually be able to enjoy those features because the Mariyungs have legit bike racks! You can park your bike just like you’re at the shops, stow your luggage like you’re on a train to the airport (not in Sydney though lol) and sit down in a seat like a normal person.

The Mariyungs are made up of either 4 or 6 car sets which can be grouped together to create 4, 6, 8 or 10 car trains. My understanding is that each 4 or 6 car set will have one carriage with bike parking, so if your train is 8 or 10 cars long it should have two.

This handy side and plan view of the Mariyung ‘B’ type car shows then large exterior bike indicator and the location of the racks right by the doorway.

To spot the bike parking just walk (or ride) alongside the train until you see a larger-than-life size picture of a bike. Board through these doors, put your bike in the rack and you’re good to go.

Now this is living!

Regional NSW Trains

Okay that’s the relatively good news. If you’re heading further afield than the intercity rail network (i.e past Scone, Dungog, Bathurst or Goulburn) you’re going to need to mess with the NSW Trainlink checked luggage rules. These trains require seat reservations to travel on and your bike will need to be booked along as checked luggage. This generally isn’t free and can’t be done online; you’ll need to call up.

There are also draconian rules about how your bike must be packed that seem to be designed to discourage people from bothering to do so.

Be aware that NSW Trainlink staff take these rules seriously. I have seen a person be told off for attempting to take a folded-up Brompton style bike onto the train and place it in the luggage rack.

Yes, it fit in the luggage rack.

Yes, it was smaller and lighter than other luggage in the luggage rack.

No, they did not require assistance from staff, and

No, it did not unduly inconvenience other passengers.

However, the rules state that:

A limit of one (1) bicycle per passenger is permitted.
Reservations are essential.
Bicycles will be stored in the checked luggage area.

The bicycle (including protective containers) must weigh less than 20 kilograms to be accepted. If the bicycle exceeds 20 kilograms in weight, it cannot be accepted.

Push Bicycles:

Bicycles must be contained in a cardboard bicycle box or commercially produced protective bag to protect the bicycle during transport.
Bicycle boxes can be obtained from bicycle retailers or provided upon request.
When packing the bicycle, ensure that no part of it protrudes.
Boxes must not be torn or damaged to ensure the safe transportation of the bicycle.
Maximum dimensions when packed: 135cm long x 80cm high x 24cm wide.
A supplementary charge of $12.10 applies for push bicycles.

Folding Bicycles:

Folding bicycles must be packed in a commercially produced protective cover bag.
Maximum dimensions when folded: 79cm long x 59cm high x 36cm wide.
No additional charges apply for carrying folding bicycles.

The passenger in question didn’t have a commercially produced protective cover bag and hadn’t called up to make a special (free) reservation for their folding bike and so was in breach of the rules.

That said, NSW Trainlink have tacitly acknowledged the current system doesn’t work very well for cyclists. Stage 1 of a trial to allow ‘roll-on’ bikes on the XPT was completed in 2024 and Stage 2 is planned for 2025.

Hopefully in the near future there will be a more legible system, something like a bike rack in the luggage car would work fine, I’m sure.

The future of regional travel

The R-Sets are due to enter service from this year and we can only assume that they will have dedicated bicycle storage facilities for passengers. These trains are intended to replace the Xplorers, XPTs and Endeavour railcars over the coming couple of years.

The Regional Rail project website has a FAQ around bike racks which says:

The new regional intercity trains will have dedicated bike spaces.

The new long and short regional trains have been designed for bicycles to be stored in line with current NSW TrainLink procedures, but these methods will be reviewed before the new regional fleet is introduced. As part of this review process, concept testing is being carried out regarding the feasibility and viability of taking and storing bikes on-board without boxing.

Sounds promising, if not entirely certain. This should mean, in theory, that by 2028 you’ll be able to seamlessly take your bike on any passenger train service in NSW – tourist trains and land cruises notwithstanding, hooray! Bring on the rail trails!

Addendum: Most of the above has been put together from my own experience, if I’ve got anything wrong or you’ve got some better ideas on how to roll onto trains in NSW I’d love to hear about it!

The missing links of the Orange cycling network

By Jed C

On August 25, 2021

In Regional NSW, Transport

There’s really nothing particularly remarkable about the cycling network in Orange, New South Wales.

You’ll find a similar situation in Bathurst, a town that’s roughly the same size a half an hour drive away. You’ll probably find a similar situation in almost any medium sized regional town in the state.

In some respects, there probably should be. Orange is a prosperous town. Orange City Council charges some of the highest rates in regional NSW. The economy is diversified, being a small agricultural centre, an important health hub and a tourism destination as well as home to a small university campus, an enormous gold mine and a strong public service presence.

Orange might be seen from Sydney as a pinot sippers paradise, but like any regional town it’s much more diverse than the capital city perception belies. Like most towns Orange has a homeless population, some crime and drug problems and a pretty shocking pokies addiction.

Orange’s established middle classes and its disadvantaged residents might not seem to have much in common, but they do both tend to bike. While the prosperous denizens of (mostly) West Orange might have a double garage with 2 SUVs and half a dozen bikes (a mountain bike and a road bike for each member of the household as a bare minimum), those residing in the poorer parts of much maligned East Orange might ride because they don’t have access to a car.

Bike Town, NSW

In Orange, cycling is kind of a big deal. The mayor famously rides, there are 2 bike shops and a dedicated bike mechanic, there are 2 separate mountain bike trailheads (there was another, much larger mountain bike area in the nearby Kinross State Forest, but NSW Forestry decided to harvest that last year, alas.) and Council is even pushing an enormous new mountain bike trail system high on Mt Canobolas.

Given all this, I would have expected Orange to boast a reliable network of bike paths and a fairly stable population of commuter cyclists.

What’s interesting in Orange is that whilst there’s a lot of recreation riders and a smaller but significant number of people riding around the suburbs, it’s actually quite unusual to see someone that is obviously riding their bike into work. In fact, in the parts of Orange where much of the employment is concentrated, it’s unusual to see cyclists at all.

Take a look at this map of the bike paths in Orange:

A map showing bike paths in Orange NSW — Bike paths in Orange are numerous but disjointed.

Here I’ve marked any separated (not in traffic) cycleway I could find. Some of these are small gravel tracks through a local park, others are multi-kilometre concrete shared paths running alongside busy roads. Quite a few of them are recently built (last ten or so years) concrete shared paths that run next to creeks with lots of connections to the local street network.

In these covid times, they are extremely popular and a wonderful asset for those people ‘lucky’ enough to live near them (there’s not really any luck, they tend to run by the creeks in the wealthier parts of town).

I’m not certain, being a recent transplant to the town, but I’m fairly sure more than half of these cycleways were built in the last decade. So things are happening.

What strikes me looking at this network is how disconnected it is. Aside from a long ride from sprawling North Orange to Dalton Street, a loop around the hospital in Bloomfield or a parabolic ride through 2 beautiful creek-side paths in West Orange, there isn’t really any way to get around town using this network.

If you want to ride in Orange, you’re going to have to get amongst the traffic.

This might seem like no problem, it’s a small town after all. And that’s true to a certain extent. There are plenty of streets I tend to gravitate towards that are light on traffic and a pleasure to ride down. Autumn Street in East Orange, shaded by huge London Planes that mark the changing seasons, is one of my favourites. Franklin Street, which is closed to cars at one point, is another.

But, by and large, traffic in Orange is pretty bad. Parking is abundant, streets are wide and difficult to cross and so people tend to drive even for short distances. Council has made some attempts to address this, mostly by building multi-lane roundabouts at as many intersections as they possibly can. These have the effect of increasing the speed of cars and making the streets even harder to get across as a pedestrian. Unsurprisingly, these have led to more cars and less walking.

For even relatively confident riders, navigating an endless run of multi-lane roundabouts is hard work and feels very, very dangerous. To their credit, most drivers in Orange seem to see cyclists as something of a curiosity and tend to slow down and give way. Most drivers.

So Orange has a lot of bikes, but people only ride them where there’s no other option or for rsport. On any given weekend you’ll find plenty of families and such riding on those extensive creek side paths, or driving their bikes out of town to Gosling Creek or Lake Canobolas to ride there, but what you won’t find are people riding around town because it’s a great way to get around. I confess to being one of the stubborn few.

I can see how this came to be. The Council saw the benefit of encouraging cycling so they started putting in some new paths. There were all these green corridors around the place that seemed like the obvious place to start, so they did. New suburbs popped up on the edge of town and changing development practices meant that these areas got some sort of bike path by default. This has left the town with a lot of bike paths, but only in areas that had the space set aside at some point. In the older parts of town there’s almost nothing.

From a functional stand point this means that while there’s lots of enjoyable spots to go for a Sunday arvo cruise, if you want to get from A to B it’s highly unlikely the cycle network is going to be much help.

To illustrate this point I’ve overlaid the main employment areas in Orange with the bike network. In the Centre of town is the CBD, to the very south are the Hospitals, to the far north is the University and the rest is a mix of retail and light industrial. I’d say a good 90% of the jobs in Orange would be based in these areas.

A map of Orange NSW showing bike paths and employment areas — If a bike path in Orange goes near your work it’s a total coincidence.

As you can see, the bike network doesn’t really go to most of these places. Where it does, it kind of skirts the edge. Not much help given these areas are going to have the most traffic, and lots of trucks at that. The only exceptions are the hospital, university and North Orange shops which have cycle paths running directly to them.

The other issue is that when you zoom in you realise that there are a lot of missing links. And I don’t mean the kind of ‘missing links’ the state government uses to justify literally any road between any 2 points. I mean missing link like you’re riding your bike along a great bike path and then it just ends only to start up again a block away. This happens a lot in Orange.

Take the trip from Orange Hospital to the CBD for example, probably the 2 main trip generators in town. There is a separated cycleway most of the way, but it has quite a few gaps.

A map of a part of Orange showing the gaps in the bike path. — Black is bike path, purple is a key employment centre, red is the street you’ll need to share with cars, buses and trucks to get back to the bike path.

Turning off the Southern Distributor onto Anson Street the bike path abruptly ends. You’ll need to ride down Anson Street for about 100 metres, there’s not even a footpath for kids to ride on. I rode this way this morning and a semi-trailer went by me on what is a narrow street without any lane markings. Fun times.
Heading North you’ll soon find yourself on a wonderful new path that runs alongside a small creek. The creek goes the whole way into town, so you’d think the bike path would too. Unfortunately, one block of it was never built. For some reason one tiny section of creek goes through a privately owned oversized backyard. In 2004 Council released a Development Control Plan outlining the possibility of acquiring just a small part of this large backyard to finish the path, but 17 years later that hasn’t happened.
Back on the path and 2 blocks north it ends again. This time you’ll have to get onto Anson Street and pass through one of the aforementioned double lane roundabouts before rejoining the path in Matthews Park, home to a model railway!
Finally, the path ends for real on Kite Street on the Southern edge of Orange CBD, one block short of the main drag, Summer Street. You’ll need to ride in traffic to get to your destination from here.

This is more or less how any bike trip in Orange plays out. Unless of course you’re riding through oft overlooked East Orange where there pretty much just isn’t any bike paths.

What can be done?

The thing about Orange is that the streets are famously wide. The town was laid out on a grid with all the streets in the old part of town being 2 chains wide. That’s about 40 metres in newspeak. Most of these streets are currently set up with one lane in each direction and loads of room for diagonally parked cars on both sides. There’s also quite often street trees between the kerbs. Some busier streets are 2 lanes each way with parallel parking on both sides.

The other thing about the streets in the 19^th century parts of Orange is that they are on a grid. The great thing about a grid is that you can prioritise different types of traffic on parallel streets. The most obvious example of this is a one way network, but it can work in other ways, too. If there’s 4 parallel streets, you could, for example, have all open to local traffic, one also for buses, another for trucks with wider turning circles and another for bikes, with plenty of traffic slowing infrastructure and safe crossings at intersections.

Because the streets in Orange are so wide, putting in completely grade separated shared bike paths doesn’t need to come at the cost of reducing parking, let alone losing a traffic lane.

There are two streets in Orange that I think would be perfect for this treatment. The first is Lords Place, that runs North-South from the aforementioned bike path dead end on Kite Street. It’s not a high traffic street and it could easily have a bike path installed without dramatically altering existing traffic arrangements. The biggest barrier to be overcome for riders would be safely getting through the roundabouts at Kite and Byng Streets.

The other is Margaret Street, which runs East-West to the North of town. This street doesn’t have much through traffic at all, being broken by the rail line which has a pedestrian and bike only level crossing. A bike lane on Margaret Street could be easily implemented and would connect 3 separate parts of the network.

A map showing possible new bike routes that could be built in Orange. — How to fix those missing links.

There are a bunch of other places in town that could do with the missing link treatment, but these would be a huge start. A couple of relatively minor changes using existing street or green corridors could turn Orange’s fun and friendly weekend routes into a legitimate cycle network that would give people a safe and healthy alternative way to get around town.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR | Bullet bus is a bust if coach departure’s not more prompt

By Jed C

On October 14, 2019

In Regional NSW, Transport

This letter was originally published by the Central Western Daily: https://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/6433084/letter-to-the-editor-bullet-bus-is-a-bust-if-coach-departures-not-more-prompt

The new coach service connecting Orange to the Bathurst Bullet 2 launches on Monday, but you could easily have missed it.

Unlike the train service, it has received almost no attention outside of the pages of this paper.

Not even NSW Trainlink have announced the service on their website.

Timetables are still yet to be updated.

It’s no wonder we’re hearing so little about it, the new service is a disappointment.

On paper it looks promising.

A new coach connection to the second Bullet should mean more options for commuters and travellers heading from Orange to Sydney.

In practice, NSW Trainlink have partnered with Australia Wide Coaches so that the existing daily Orange-Sydney-Orange coach service will now divert into Bathurst Railway Station to connect with the new train.

This is a problem for two reasons:

One, that coach used to provide a valuable service for people wanting to leave Sydney at 5pm and be back in Orange at 9.15pm.

Now that it has shifted to meet the train, anyone wanting to get to Orange from Sydney after 4pm will need to take the 5.47pm Bathurst Bullet and a coach that arrives into Orange at 10.45pm.

GOING LOCO: The second Bathurst Bullet service is proving popular.

That makes it a late finish.

More problematically, the ‘new’ coach service is operated by a business that runs a service in direct competition to the train, and it shows.

The existing coaches connecting Orange and the Bullet have six and seven minutes between bus and train arrival and departure.

Just enough time to get off one service and onto the next.

The new train for Bathurst could be complemented by a prompt coach departure to Orange and beyond … this would give locals greater choice when travelling down to Sydney. Reader Jed Coppa

The new coaches will have 20 and 23 minutes.

This means an unnecessary extra 15 minutes for passengers waiting at Bathurst Station.

A small difference but one that makes the direct Orange to Sydney coach that little bit more appealing by comparison.

Passengers taking the new coach to the Bullet 2 will have a choice to make.

They can get off at Bathurst and wait 20 minutes for the train or stay on the coach the whole way to Sydney and arrive 49 minutes earlier.

Anyone who is under any time pressure and can afford the fare will opt for the coach.

The same is the case in the evening.

The Bullet leaves Central at 3.05pm followed by the coach at 3.40pm.

Either way, you’re arriving into Orange on the coach at 8 o’clock.

The new train for Bathurst could be complemented by a prompt coach departure to Orange and beyond.

This would give locals greater choice when travelling down to Sydney.

Instead we’ve had a new service shoehorned into an existing service leaving commuters with no more options than before.

Jed Coppa