Jan Hassell's poor eyesight means she can't drive, and she also has epilepsy and a nerve condition that makes sitting for too long very painful.
But the retired nurse has no choice but to make the hour-long journey from her home in Horsham to Nhill, to visit her elderly parents, on a bus.
Her sister, who owns a farm with her husband at Balmoral, sometimes drives her to her parents, but that's a four-hour round trip given Balmoral is an hour south of Horsham.
If Ms Hassell chooses the V/Line bus, she has to spend the night in Nhill before the next bus passes through town to take her home.
She is one of many western Victorian residents who badly want regular passenger trains to return after the Kennett government discontinued the service in 1993.
"I was very angry knowing I would never have a driver's licence and would have to either use public transport or rely on other people to get me from A to B, which I don't like doing because it puts them out," Ms Hassell said.
"That was when I discovered I couldn't sit for long periods of time on a bus because of the sciatica.
"Whereas on a train you can get up and walk around. It's far more comfortable, more leg room. It would mean my sister could go from Balmoral directly to see Mum and Dad."
Gauging the problem
Today Ararat is the end of the line for trains travelling west from Melbourne after the Bracks government reintroduced passenger services there in 2004.
There are tracks beyond the town but they're standard gauge, too narrow for the V/Line services which run on broad gauge track.
The Overland stops in the Wimmera four times a week – twice as it travels towards Adelaide and twice heading to Melbourne — but it has to use the standard gauge line which goes via Ararat and Geelong.
It entirely bypasses Ballarat, where Wimmera residents go for medical appointments and other services not available anywhere else in the region.
The Overland is dependent on subsidies to be viable.
Nhill's Helen Woodhouse-Herrick was among the successful campaigners in 2020, who secured three years of funding from the Victorian government to continue the Overland.
But she said another drawback was it arrived in the Wimmera at inconvenient times for commuters.
"You go from Adelaide to Melbourne on a Sunday, but then you have to return home again next morning at 8 o'clock on Monday, otherwise you have to have four nights in a hotel to catch the return Overland on the Friday," she said.
"It's just ridiculous.
"A lot of people are pensioners, people with disabilities, a lot of them can't afford four nights in a hotel. They get down to Melbourne and do their appointments, and they want to get home again [the] next day. We need the advantage of an extra service or the timetable changed."
Ms Hassell is one of the people that travel to Ballarat and Melbourne for medical appointments.
In the past, she has had to stop seeing some specialists – eye doctors and neurologists – because reaching them became "too difficult".
"I had to get on a bus and then change from a bus to a train and [then] either walk from Flinders Street or get a taxi to the specialist. And then I have to stay the night most of the time because the service would not run again until the following day," she said.
Getting back on track
Campaigners like Ms Woodhouse-Herrick and former Horsham mayor Mark Radford say another solution may be to introduce daily shuttle trains from Horsham and Nhill to link up with the existing services departing Ararat.
"The bus service isn't suitable for a young family, particularly young families with pushers, older folks," Mr Radford said.
"I'd be quite confident people all the way up the line would use the service. The shuttle idea is a stopgap measure until the bigger expensive things happen including regauging lines.
He took a proposal for the service to Victoria's Department of Transport in 2020. The plan included a timetable with five return services between Horsham an Ararat each weekday between 5am and 10pm.
"Even the idea of having an extra service for the Overland would help, but it is still not the final solution of having a regular daily passenger train service from the Wimmera to Melbourne.
"Horsham is a regional centre, and public transport is a key question in attracting people to regional centres. It would have an instantaneous effect on tourism."
Track upgrades, turnback facilities and regauging train axles to run on standard gauge are required even before shuttle trains can run on the western Victorian rails.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated that all this would cost $47 million, a fraction of the $200 billion for Melbourne's suburban rail loop or removing one level crossing.
"It's a little bit unfair," Ms Woodhouse-Herrick said.
"We are all supposed to be out of the same purse but we're not getting anything up this way."
Ms Hassell agrees.
"I can understand from the point of view that there are more people that live in Melbourne, however country people can't be neglected. They still need to be able to get around," she said.
"There are some things that are essential services that you lose money on regardless of what they are. It's not a profit-making type of business."
Where the parties stand
In 2018, the opposition pledged to fund a business case for the return of passenger rail from Horsham and Hamilton, and to return trains to the Mildura line, which were also discontinued under Kennett in 1993.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has not yet reaffirmed that commitment.
"We haven't announced it to date, but I'm certainly more than happy to look at it," Mr Guy said in August this year.
Premier Daniel Andrews said his government relied on the Department of Transport rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office for matters such as this.
"We've made investments across the board, we've upgraded every single regional passenger line across the state. We don't close country train lines, we've opened some up that previous governments have closed down," Mr Andrews said this week.
