Commuters travelling from Caboolture, Morayfield and Burpengary into Brisbane faced severely disrupted journeys from April 10, with buses replacing trains on their line for the first three days of the closure period and replacement services struggling to keep pace with the volume of passengers turning up at transfer points.
For those who make the daily journey from the Caboolture corridor into the city, this week was a sharp reminder of just how much their commute depends on a functioning rail connection, and what happens when that connection breaks down without adequate contingency in place.
What Happened at the Transfer Points
Joanne McCarthy’s experience on April 10 captures what many Caboolture commuters faced that morning. Her journey from Caboolture to Roma Street, which normally takes one hour, stretched to two and a half hours. Passengers were directed off trains at Geebung, where a line of hundreds of people was already waiting on the rail bridge before 7am.
“There were no buses there waiting for us,” McCarthy said. She waited 45 minutes in the heat before boarding a bus, with no information coming through about when services would arrive or what was happening.
“We had no communication whatsoever about what was happening. I was thinking about jumping in an Uber, but you couldn’t even get to the front of the line to get down the stairs to get an Uber.”
That experience, of being stranded mid-journey with no information and no clear path forward, was repeated across dozens of commuters redirected from the northern corridor into the Geebung and Northgate bus replacement queues.
Why the Queues Got So Bad
Thompson Bus Services, contracted to run replacement buses across southeast Queensland, was caught off guard by the volume of passengers. Demand surged 50 per cent above what the company had anticipated, and the result was queues that stretched 300 metres at the worst points and 45-minute waits just to board.
By Monday afternoon, 10 additional services had been scheduled for the evening peak, and further services were added for Tuesday morning. Founder Jeanie Thompson acknowledged the shortfall directly.
“Translink orders the buses and we provide them, there was a lot more people than they originally thought,” she said. “We were caught out a bit on Monday morning.”
The company brought in 100 buses from interstate and mobilised every available bus in the southeast corner. At peak, it was coordinating 600 bus driver shifts a day across roughly 300 buses, and was still advertising for additional drivers and customer service staff during the disruption period.
The comparison with normal service gives the scale of the problem context. Rail replacement buses on the affected northern corridor arrived roughly every eight minutes. In a normal morning peak, the combined rail network funnels a train through the inner-north corridor every three minutes. That gap, from three-minute frequency to eight-minute frequency, multiplied across a network handling thousands of passengers, produced the queues that Caboolture commuters found themselves joining at transfer points.
The Caboolture Line Schedule: What Changed and When
For Caboolture, Morayfield and Burpengary commuters, the schedule tells the specific story. Buses replaced trains between Gympie North and Caboolture on April 10, 11 and 12. From April 13, Sunshine Coast line trains resumed running between Gympie North and Caboolture, meaning that the direct northern leg of the journey returned to rail on that date.
The transfer problem, however, persisted. Even with the northern leg back on rail, commuters still faced the disruption zone between Northgate and Bowen Hills, which continued through to April 16 before reopening. Getting from Caboolture into the city still required navigating a transfer, and those transfers remained subject to the delays and queuing that defined the first week of closures.
The broader network picture extends further. Disruptions on the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines continue through April 30, and the southern inner gap between Banoon and Boggo Road remains in place for the same period. For commuters whose journeys connect across these corridors, the impact stretches well beyond the initial week.
The Bigger Picture for Northern Corridor Commuters
South East Queensland Transport Association founder Imogen Buckley described the scenes at replacement bus stops as damaging to public transport’s reputation at exactly the wrong moment.
“The fact that there are commuters waiting on the platform for a line that stretches outside of the station, it’s embarrassing; it makes public transport look terrible,” she said.
Buckley was clear that the track closures themselves were a necessary part of maintaining and improving the network. “We need better infrastructure so we can have less track closures in the future and have a frequent and reliable network,” she said. The problem was not the decision to close tracks for maintenance, but the failure to deploy enough replacement capacity to make the disruption manageable for the people who had no other choice but to show up and wait.
Checking Before You Travel
For Caboolture, Morayfield and Burpengary commuters still navigating the remainder of April, the most practical step is to check the full closure schedule before each journey. The schedule table below reflects the verified travel changes as published:
April 10 to 12: Buses replaced trains between Gympie North and Caboolture, and between Northgate and Bowen Hills. From April 13, the northern leg between Gympie North and Caboolture returned to rail service. Disruptions between Northgate, Bowen Hills and the southern lines continue in various forms through April 30.
Up-to-date service information is available through the Translink journey planner at translink.com.au or via the Translink app.
Published 14-April-2026
Featured Image Credit: Charis Mullen MP/Facebook
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