V/Line shutdown extends into Thursday

Thousands of V/Line passengers face another day of disruption, with train services across the state’s network cancelled through Thursday morning’s peak.

The extended shutdown follows Wednesday’s nationwide Telstra outage, which forced V/Line to suspend all train services and continues to affect the rail network despite most telecommunications services now being restored.

The Department of Transport and Planning confirmed no V/Line trains would run on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, with only a very limited coach replacement service available.

Passengers have again been urged to defer travel until further notice.

In an update published to its website, V/Line said it was continuing to assess the situation and would advise commuters when services resume.

“There is no estimated time for rectification at this stage,” the update reads.

“We anticipate services to be impacted until clearance time is given.”

The outages began at about 4.30am on Wednesday, triggered by broken timers at two Telstra data centres in Melbourne and Sydney.

By about 6am, the disruption had reached the V/Line network, halting all services across the state.

It is understood some calls to Triple Zero were impacted before about 90 per cent of the network was restored around 2pm on Wednesday afternoon.

Telstra said it was still investigating the cause of the fault but had ruled out malicious activity.

In a joint statement, communications minister Anika Wells and emergency management minister Kristy McBain said a full investigation will be conducted into the outage.

“Telstra will need to account for how and why this outage occurred,” the statement read.