Metro Tunnel’s “dress rehearsal” rolls out 

Metro Tunnel is taking another step towards opening to passengers next year as the project starts trial operations – the “dress rehearsal”. 

It’s the first time that station staff, drivers, operators and signallers will trial the project’s procedures, systems and technology in the five new state-of-the-art underground stations and inside the twin nine-kilometre tunnels to ensure everything is safe before opening to the public. 

The team will run through more than 100 exercises to demonstrate the project’s complex systems and technology are working as designed. 

Some exercises will be rehearsed multiple times over many months to make sure all the necessary processes and procedures are in place for staff ahead of passenger services in 2025. 

Activities will range from the fundamentals, such as manual opening and closing of the platform screen doors in the event of a failure, to mock intruder detection, and mass station and train evacuation exercises.  

Many of these scenarios will take place inside the new stations and tunnels. However, there will at times be disruptions to train services on the Sunbury and Cranbourne/Pakenham lines as trial services are run from Hawksburn to West Footscray, and all the way from Sunbury through the tunnel to Cranbourne and Pakenham.

Trial operations will continue throughout 2025, while train testing and construction on the remaining two stations, Town Hall and State Library in Swanston St in the CBD, continues.  

Major construction at three of the stations; Arden, Parkville and Anzac, has already finished.

The Metro Tunnel is the biggest upgrade of Melbourne’s train network since the City Loop opened in 1981, which will double the size of Melbourne’s underground rail network as we move towards becoming Australia’s biggest city. 

It will connect the busy Sunbury and Cranbourne/Pakenham lines via a new tunnel and five new stations underneath the city, creating an end-to-end rail line from the north-west to the south-east, giving passengers new connections and more travel choice. •