What killed The Overland?

The Socialist Bulletin Staff - 4/1/2026

TODAY, to get between the capitals of Victoria and South Australia on any given day, there are two options: take the expensive and harmful air route, or take the expensive and tiring route of driving. In the past, however, there was a third option: a fairly affordable, all-sleeping overnight train running every night on a direct route between Melbourne and Adelaide. This was The Overland, jointly run by the South Australian (later Federal) and Victorian governments.

The service originated as the Intercolonial Express in 1886 when the state systems of Victoria and South Australia were connected at the town of Serviceton, and it operated as a public transport service during this period.

Infrastructure improvements were gradual but constant along the rail corridor for the following century, with the service seen by both the Victorian Railways and the South Australian Railways as their premier service.

Rolling stock evolved from mid-19th century wooden carriages to luxury steel carriages with air conditioning by the early 1950s, and the service, running overnight, was scheduled to take 13½ hours, 3 hours longer than the current day train. Despite the longer running time, this running time served as an additional benefit for The Overland in the past, as a longer running time is far more convenient for an overnight train, allowing passengers to get a good night's sleep while the train is in motion, and arrive in their destination at a reasonable time. Today, the ten hour running period, running entirely during the day, is an ongoing issue for The Overland, as it now takes up an entire day of passengers' time.

Australian National Railways, a federal government-owned railway operator, took over the South Australian Railways' portion of ownership of The Overland in 1978, following an earlier election commitment by Gough Whitlam's Labor Party to form a federal railway operator, which was supported by the Fraser-led government following the 1975 coup.

In 1984, the Overland's Adelaide terminus was changed from Adelaide Station, in Adelaide's Central Business District, to Keswick Terminal, in Adelaide's Park lands, which was built new as an extremely car-oriented station, with very little pedestrian access, and very little public transport access. This was despite very few people using The Overland having access to a car when arriving in Adelaide.

While the advent of cheaper passenger flights between Adelaide and Melbourne, ridership on The Overland took a large hit, however this was not the death blow for the service.

The election of Jeff Kennett in Victoria in 1992, on a platform of mass closures of rail services across the state, saw Victorian operator V/Line forced to hand over their portion of The Overland to Australian National, which by this time was largely a freight operator, rather than a passenger one.

The subsequent election of John Howard at a federal level in 1996 saw Australian National cut up and privatised, with the interstate passenger services of the operator, which also included The Indian Pacific and The Ghan, sold off to Great Southern Railway (now Journey Beyond Rail), which is now controlled by private equity.

While the new operator was well-suited to run the luxury services, The Ghan and The Indian Pacific, which even under government operation were targeted more to a petty-bourgeois market, Great Southern was entirely incapable of running The Overland which is far more useful as a public transport service.

The service remained subsidised by the South Australian and Victorian governments during private operation, at a higher cost than it had previously been under government operation.

In 2000, services were cut to just four times per week in each direction, and in 2006, The Overland transitioned from an overnight sleeping service to a daylight service, drastically cutting its use-case.

Remaining sleeping carriages owned by Journey Beyond Rail now sit in disrepair, with an uncertain future.

In 2014, the service was again cut, to just two trains in each direction per week, rendering the service almost entirely useless.

Concession fares were eliminated in 2017, and the service was repeatedly put into jeopardy in 2018, when a government subsidy temporarily expired and the private operator refused to operate the service without subsidy, and in 2020, when both COVID-19 prevented services, and the government subsidy expired once again.

Today, the service runs with less than a third of the ridership seen at the start of privatisation, and less than a quarter of the ridership from 1997, the year before privatisation.

So, who killed The Overland? It clearly was not the airlines, even though they did cause a large decrease in ridership, but what did kill The Overland was its privatisation. The experience of The Overland in privatisation serves as a very strong cautionary tale, that we must strongly oppose all forms of privatisation of government services.