 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
Central (also known as Sydney Terminal) is the largest railway station in Sydney, Australia, which services almost all of the lines on the CityRail network, and is the major intercity/interstate rail hub.
Central has twenty-five platforms, two underground. Platforms 1 to 15 form what is officially called Sydney Terminal, and are the departure point for all interstate, country and intercity services out of Sydney. Platforms 16 to 25, officially called Central, serve suburban services, including all those through services going on to the City Circle. Platforms 24 and 25 are underground, and service the Illawarra/Eastern Suburbs line. Platforms 26 and 27 also exist, but are not in use. Central is large, since it is the only terminus for commuter rail and long-distance services, whilst London, for instance, has no fewer than eleven major railway stations serving long-distance and outer-suburban railway passengers - Sydney has just one (though quite a few important metropolises share this feature; Union Station in Los Angeles and Centraalstation in Amsterdam are two examples).
Central is also the terminus of Sydney's only light rail line, and many major bus services depart from adjacent Eddy Avenue or from Railway Square on Broadway, accessible through the Devonshire Street Tunnel, which crosses directly under the rail station from the suburban lines.
All long-distance rural and interstate passenger trains operated by the State-owned CountryLink and the formerly Federally-owned Great Southern Railway terminate there, including the famous Indian Pacific, the thrice-weekly train between Sydney and Perth, Western Australia - the only train to cross a continent from one ocean to the other.
In attempting to describe Sydney's Central Station, it is probably for the better to conceive of the station as two separate railway stations that are adjacent to each other.
The western half of Central Station consists of fifteen terminating platforms and was opened in 1906. This section is dominated by a large vaulted roof over the concourse and elaborate masonry composed primarily of sandstone, the most common rock in the Sydney region. A tall Gothic Revival sandstone clock tower that can be seen from considerable distances stands at the north-western corner of the station complex. This western section is popularly known as the country platforms, even though only four platforms are commonly used for long-distance trains. Most of the fifteen platforms are used for CityRail's intercity services which terminate at Central.
The eastern half of Central Station consists of twelve non-terminating platforms, four of which are underground. These platforms are used almost exclusively by suburban CityRail services (and a limited number of non-terminating intercity services during peak hours), very few of which terminate at Central. The eight above-ground platforms were opened in 1926 as part of a massive electrification and modernisation programme aimed at improving Sydney's suburban railway services. At nearly the same time, the first sections of the City Circle were opened. (For more details about the CityRail network and its history, please refer to the CityRail article.)
This eastern section is known as the suburban platforms to distinguish it from the western terminating tracks.
The four underground platforms were built as part of the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Construction commenced in 1948 but the underground railway line was not finished until 1979. While the plans called for four platforms, two were found to be not needed and are currently used as archival storage by the New South Wales railway authorities.
The platforms at Sydney's Central Station are numbered from 1 to 27, with 1 being the westernmost platform and 27 being one of the easternmost. The services which generally use each platform are listed below.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
