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Sunshine Is Becoming Melbourne's Western Transport Hub - Here Is What Is Actually Changing

Sunshine Is Becoming Melbourne's Western Transport Hub - Here Is What Is Actually Changing

September 28, 2026·Hellbourne

Sunshine station platform 3, 21 January 2026
Sunshine station, existing regional platform 3, looking west, 21 January 2026. Not the new platforms in the stage 1 designs. Photograph by PEPSI697, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sunshine is already a junction. Sunshine station, on the Sunbury line, is where metropolitan trains meet regional services. What is changing in 2026 is the station itself, and more than 6 km of track from West Footscray to Albion around it. The airport railway that would use that extra room is still a later stage. The photograph is the existing regional platform 3 on 21 January 2026, not the two new platforms in the stage 1 designs.

The station works

Melbourne Airport Rail stage 1 is the West Footscray to Albion upgrade. The Australian and Victorian governments put more than $4 billion into that stage. Big Build’s February 2026 designs show two new platforms at Sunshine for regional trains, a longer concourse, a rebuilt bus interchange, and new forecourts. The same release folds in part of the Victorian government’s Sunshine Station Masterplan: a walking and cycling link across the rail line, and open space at the entrances.

Big Build says the rebuilt station will be able to take more than 1,000 trains a day. That number is a design capacity, not the timetable. The reason given for the extra platforms is to separate regional trains from Sunbury line and freight trains, so there is room later for a line to the airport and for electric trains toward Melton.

The work on the ground in 2026 is mostly in the way of that station, not the station building. A jet-fuel pipeline between Sunshine and Albion is being lowered about 30 metres so the new platforms can be built over the old alignment. Soil testing around the station, the bus bays, and two car parks was scheduled from 29 September to 14 October 2026. Big Build’s target for finishing the West Footscray to Albion works, including the station, is 2030.

The lines that already meet here

Sunshine is not getting its first railway. The Sunbury line already runs through West Footscray station, Tottenham, Sunshine, and Albion station. Regional trains toward Ballarat and Geelong already pass the station. Stage 1 keeps that geography and rebuilds the junction: new bridges, an underpass, and a realigned Sunbury line between Sunshine and West Footscray so airport tracks and a future Melton electrification have somewhere to go.

Tottenham and Albion get new stations as part of the same package. Tottenham’s is the later of the two. The February 2026 design note says its construction is set to start in 2027. Albion’s car park has already been taken over as a works site, closed from 2 February 2026 until late 2026.

None of that is a service to Melbourne Airport. Dedicated tracks past Albion, and stations at Keilor East and the airport, are described as future stages.

What the council is planning around it

Brimbank has treated the station as the centre of a much larger precinct for several years. The council’s own pages call Sunshine a priority precinct and say the state has also listed it as a metropolitan activity centre, a national employment and innovation centre, and a transport super hub. In October 2022 the state released a Sunshine Station Precinct Masterplan. Brimbank records that announcement as a $143 million first stage of the masterplan, tied to Melbourne Airport Rail.

That $143 million is not the current stage 1 budget. The rail package now being built is the separate “more than $4 billion” West Footscray to Albion upgrade. The masterplan items that have been pulled into the 2026 designs are the concourse, the bus interchange, the forecourts, and the walking and cycling link. The council’s longer claim, in its Sunshine Priority Precinct Vision 2050, is that the precinct could double its residents and jobs by 2050. That is the council’s planning aim. It is not a count of homes approved or built.

The 2021 Census counted 9,445 people usually living in the suburb of Sunshine, inside a council of 194,618. The station works sit in that small suburb. The growth the council is talking about is the wider precinct, not a change that has already shown up in the Census.

References

Melbourne Airport Rail Is Finally Moving Again - What Stage 1 Actually Delivers