Melbourne's train strike is going to ruin a lot of days. But one campaign is taking the opportunity to remind travellers that however bad you have it, it's really only a first-world problem.

Fairfield man James Wright has set up an online campaign calling for Melburnians affected by the train strike on Friday to donate their myki fare to help refugees in the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Middle East.

Mr Wright's campaign was founded after he saw a photo, one that had quickly made its way around the world, of the broken body of a tiny three-year asylum seeker washed ashore in Turkey.

"I saw these photos and it affected me - I have two daughters," Mr Wright told Fairfax Media.

"I thought, surely there's something we can do in a short space of time that would make a meaningful contribution to prevent that from happening again.

"I knew that tomorrow was going to be very frustrating, so I wanted to channel that frustration into something useful to help people directly affected by the humanitarian crisis."

He's only asking for a relatively- small sum - $2500 - and by midnight Thursday he'd already raised half that through donations from 46 people.

All money raised will go to Australia for UNHCR, an Australian charity that raises funds to support the work of the UN Refugee Agency.

"I wasn't actually going to take the train tomorrow, but have a myki fare anyway," wrote one donator. "Worth supporting even though I don't actually travel by train!," wrote another.

"I think there is something like 60,000 commuters everyday so if we can capture some of them that adds up very, very quickly," Mr Wright said.

Donate here.