Delhi: It's the Modi Express – literally.

At 8.30pm on November 16, 220 fervent admirers of India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi will depart Melbourne's Southern Cross Station on a chartered overnight train bound for Sydney in time to see him appear live in front of 16,000 people at the Allphones Arena the next evening.

The train will be specially catered, with food cooked in the style of Mr Modi's home state of Gujarat in India's north-west.

"The response was beyond our expectation as people were very excited about the whole concept," said Ashwin Bora from the Indian Australian Community Foundation (IACF), who helped to come up with the idea of chartering the train.

"We received over 100 bookings within two hours of this announcement. Even though we have a much larger number coming from Melbourne, we could only accommodate 220 in the 'Modi Express' of four carriages," Mr Bora told Fairfax Media.