Pictures of the new South Morang Station

Taken on the first weekday of operation.

New Metro timetable - 10 min frequencies for Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston as three new stations open

Today four big things happened to transform train services in Melbourne. 

* The Epping line gains another station with an extension to South Morang, the subject of a community campaign for many years. 

* New stations opened at Cardinia Rd on the Pakenham line and Lynbrook on the Cranbourne line. Both serve growth area catchments. 

* Weekend train services to Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston were doubled from every 20 to every 10 minutes between approximately 10am and 7pm. This provided turn-up-and-go service over most of the day. However weekend evening and Sunday morning headways remained at every 30 minutes. 

* Extra run time was added to Metro timetables, making punctuality targets easier to achieve. And indeed there was a major improvement in reported punctuality after this change. 

More on page 6 of the DoT Annual Report: 

https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-06/DOT-Annual-Report-2011-2012.pdf

 
Daniel Bowen's item: https://danielbowen.com/2012/03/07/fkn-line-first-metro/

March 7 Age article about the change here: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/citys-train-services-set-for-major-overhaul-20120307-1ujkl.html

Metro website announcement: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20120408204403/http://newtimetable.metrotrains.com.au/

Note: This item has been added retrospectively for posterity.