Despite a campaign by Orange for nearly four years to have the Bathurst Bullet two-car rail endeavour to come on to Orange and be parked here overnight, the state government has knocked the idea on the head.
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Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Mark Coure has told Orange MP Phil Donato there’s no plans at this time to extend the Bullet to Orange or to stable it here overnight.
He said opportunities for transport improvements in NSW, including the Central West, would be considered as part of the government's new approach to transport planning to meet the demands of the predicted population growth.
After arriving at Bathurst at night the Bullet is taken back to Lithgow for an overnight sleep of less than four hours, apparently for security reasons, and then driven back to Bathurst again early the next morning before loading passengers and going to Sydney at 5.48am.
If it came on to Orange, we would have an early morning Sydney service so it’s doubtful Orange City Council and its rail action group will give up despite the government’s knockback.
In the meantime the government says it’s looking at a replacement for our old XPT that’s well past its use-by date. One possibility is a high-speed tilt train similar to those operated by Queensland Rail between Brisbane, Rockhampton and Cairns.
With a top speed of 160kmh the train tilts five degrees so it can corner faster but the tight curves between Bathurst and Orange would prevent it doing that.
MISSED THE TOURISM BOAT
ORANGE has missed the tourism boat again, or in this case the double decker trams, with the state government launching a new advertising blitz in Hong Kong promoting Dubbo and Mudgee to well-off Chinese tourists.
The painted trams and buses have images of zebras at Dubbo’s Western Plains Zoo and wining and dining at Mudgee emblazoned on the sides in a bid to get Chinese tourists away from Sydney and into the bush.
So what aren’t we doing here to promote ourselves? Obviously we aren’t doing anything other than trying to sell wine.
We’ve also been replaced on Nine’s national weather map by Mudgee and nobody seems concerned about that.
It’s time, as Gough Whitlam once said, to get out there and push the best country city in NSW.
SUPER UTES
BECAUSE Holden and Ford don’t make utes any more, V8 Supercars plans to introduce a new race series called SuperUtes for production-based turbo diesel dual cabs like Mazda BT50, Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi Triton and Ford Ranger.
They’re spending lots of money developing $60,000 individual race kits and componentry for each make and hope to be on the start grid next year.
But all the time and expenditure being put into developing the new series is unnecessary, of course, because right here in Orange we have ready-made fields of tradies and minies who race flat-out around the place all the time.
Locked in speed mode every day going to and from work, all the drivers need do to become race-ready is to take the tools out of the back and stick some numbers on the side.
The way some of them drive, they’d go really well on the race track.
Oh, and get rid of the bull bars.
