A NEW stop on the second Bathurst Bullet daily train service to Sydney will give Oberon residents a chance to climb aboard.
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State Member for Bathurst Paul Toole confirmed on Wednesday morning that the new service will stop at Tarana, north of Oberon, when it is introduced next year.
He said Opal ticket gates and readers will be installed at the Tarana train station as the village becomes part of the Bullet service.
Transport for NSW will be doing the work and will finalise details before the new train service commences, Mr Toole said.
It follows the state member's announcement on Tuesday in Bathurst that the Bullet would be getting a second daily service in response to its popularity since it was introduced in 2012.
The second daily Bathurst Bullet service will leave Bathurst at around 7.30am each weekday and leave Sydney for the return trip around 3pm.
The current Bullet departs Bathurst at 5.46am on weekdays and makes its return from Sydney’s Central Station at 5.47pm, arriving back in Bathurst just after 9.30pm.
There will also be a second weekend service to and from Sydney but timetable details are still being finalised.
The Bullet will also be upgraded with new carriages being built out of a new maintenance facility in Dubbo, Mr Toole said.
The carriages will be rolled out across the state's rail network from the early 2020s.
The stop at Tarana is a win for Oberon residents who were calling for the stop back when the Bullet was introduced in 2012.
Both Mr Toole and then Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian were lobbied at the time about a Tarana stop and a petition gathered more than 200 signatures.
Potential Oberon passengers argued at the time that a stop at Tarana could replace a similar stop-on-demand halt at Bell, which they said had been virtually unused.
In 2017, Lithgow City Council resolved to lobby for two extra carriages to be added to the Bullet and to write to NSW TrainLink to ask it to consider having the train stop at Tarana, Westmead and Strathfield.
But not all councillors agreed with the need to have more stops: Councillor Steve Ring said a stop at Tarana and Rydal would use up any time passengers saved by using the Bullet compared with regular services.