Mr Donato will discuss the replacement express passenger train (XPT) fleet due to be ordered by 2019 after the Coalition flagged earlier this month it wanted full assembly to happen in NSW.

He said he and Orange City Council supported the idea of Orange being one of the locations.

“It’s a $50 million project or thereabouts, it would create hundreds of jobs in the process, we have the facilities to be able to accommodate that,” he said.

Orange Rail Action Group member Peter Bilenkij agreed it was an opportunity to get the region’s manufacturing sector growing.

However, he said also upgrading the rail line between Blayney and Bathurst was still important.

“You don’t want to run a beautiful new train at 40km/h through those curves,” he said.