Key points

• The Victoria Racing Club has revamped the Rails members carpark into an area open to Birdcage attendees which it has renamed the “Rails Promenade”. 
• Members are no longer be able to park their car in the Rails carpark or bring their own tables, chairs, umbrellas or marquees. 
• The cost of a car park on the Rails this year has more than doubled with the car park $995 and passes for members guests to attend $195 each. 

The Victoria Racing Club will put an end to traditional car boot picnics in one of its key racegoers’ car parks as the corporate Birdcage area encroaches on what was previously a members’ area.

Members have described the revamped Rails car park, which sits right on the racetrack in front of the Birdcage, as “Birdcage Lite”. They are concerned the changes and price increase will push longstanding members out.

Car boot picnics of the past in the Rails car park in 2007. Credit:Justin McManus

In previous years, VRC members have entered a ballot to gain a coveted car park on the Rails, which enabled them to bring in their own food, drinks, furniture and decorations to the Cup Carnival.

Spots were filled with simple picnics, but some members went all out with their own events, featuring barbecues, tables set with linen and marquees.

This year, the Rails car park has been renamed the “Rails Promenade”. Corporate Birdcage attendees will be able to enter the area, which was previously only accessible to members and their guests.

Members are no longer allowed to leave their cars in the car park or bring their own furniture and decorations. The VRC instead requires them to pay an increased cost for car parks, with regulation umbrellas, tables and chairs.

The revamped Rails car park which has been renamed the “Rails Promenade” and decked out with uniform umbrellas and furniture. Credit:Scott McNaughton

The cost of a car park on the Rails this year is $995, with passes available to members’ guests for $195 each.

The cost has more than doubled from 2019, when a car park was between $320 and $540 depending on the race day. Passes were between $109 and $145.

Shane Plummer has been a VRC member for 20 years and regularly hired a car park space on the Rails, decking it out with his own marquee, table, chairs, tubs of drinks and champagne glasses.

“We were self sufficient,” he said. “Why pay $10 to hire the chair when you can buy one for $9?”

The Rails car park sits between the luxury marquees in the Birdcage, like the Lexus marquee, and the race track.Credit:Scott McNaughton

Plummer has booked a car park again this year for Stakes Day but said he was struggling to get people to attend because of the price hike, which he partly attributed to the built-in cost of the required umbrellas, tables and chairs.

“I can’t get anyone to come,” Plummer said. “I only have one non-member coming. I used to have over 60 people coming and this year I am battling to get 20 people and everyone has said ‘I can’t afford it, not with that price’.”

Plummer said he believed the VRC was trying to make the area “more corporate” and price out members.

“Maybe it is the optics of looking from the Birdcage and seeing a camping sort of area set up in front of them,” he said.

There are two main members’ car park areas at Flemington: the Rails and the Nursery. The Nursery is at the back of the racecourse and does not have a view of the racetrack or horses. Members can also buy a permanent car park on the bitumen area at the entrance to the racecourse.

Under the new structure, members can still have car boot picnics in the Nursery and the permanent car park areas.

VRC member Simon Olive is unhappy with the changes, which he views as a move to push members out of the prime trackside real estate.

“Normally what we do is entertain 40 or 50 people in the Rails car park, which has now been seconded as the Birdcage Lite so this year we are just going into the members’ enclosure,” he said.

Tamara Poynton and Jemma Francome in 2002 in the members’ car park.Credit:Jason South

“The VRC has increased the prices but then sold it that you will have access to the Birdcage and conversely the Birdcage will have access, not to the Rails car park but to the Rails Promenade, and the cynic in me says they are trying to push members back into the Nursery.”

VRC chair Neil Wilson said the changes to the Rails car park made it “bigger and brighter than ever.”

“We’ve just changed the configuration so there was the Rails and the Birdcage and now those two areas are still identified as separate products but you’re able to go from one to the other,” he said.

Wilson said the changes made the Rails a “more permanent structure”, with more conformity in how it looked and was set up.

“We think is a better way to service that market but also from a safety point of view it’s better to have control of those things,” he said.

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