SYDNEY CENTRAL STATION

Central Railway Station is located at the southern end of the Sydney CBD and is the largest railway station in Australia. It services almost all of the lines on the Sydney Trains network, and is the major terminus for interurban and interstate rail services; it houses the operations of The Rail Corporation New South Wales; it sits adjacent to Railway Square and is officially located in Haymarket. It is also the closest station to the University of Technology Sydney at Broadway.

There have been three terminal stations in Sydney. The original Sydney Station was opened on 26 September 1855 in an area known as "Cleveland Fields." This station (one wooden platform in a corrugated iron shed), called Redfern, had Devonshire Street as its northern boundary. When this station became inadequate for the traffic it carried, a new station was built in 1874 on the same site and also called Redfern. This was a brick building with two platforms. It grew to 14 platforms before it was replaced by the present-day station to the north of Devonshire Street.

The new station was built on a site previously occupied by the Devonshire Street Cemetery, a convent, a female refuge, a police barracks, a parsonage and a Benevolent Society. The remains exhumed from the cemetery were re-interred at a number of other Sydney cemeteries including Rookwood Cemetery and Waverley Cemetery. Bodies were moved to Botany by steam tram motors and flat cars. The new 15-platform station, still in use, opened on 4 August 1906, and included the previous Mortuary railway station used to transport funeral parties to Rookwood Cemetery. The last train departed platform 5 of the 1874 station at midnight. During the remainder of that night the passenger concourse was demolished and the line extended through the old station into the new station. The Western Mail train that arrived in Sydney at 5:50am on 5 August 1906 arrived at the new station.

Devonshire Street, which separated the two stations, became a pedestrian underpass to allow people to cross the railway line and is now known by many as the Devonshire Street Tunnel. A 75-metre clock tower in the Free Classical style was added at the north-western corner of the station, opened in 3 March 1921. Central Station was designed by the Government Architect, Walter Liberty Vernon, and has been described as the "grandest railway station in Australia." It is listed on the Register of the National Estate.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

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