Flinders Street station is a major railway station located on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Located near Federation Square and St Paul's Cathedral, it is the busiest railway station in Victoria, serving the entire electrified metropolitan rail network (except the Metro Tunnel lines), 15 tram routes travelling to and from the city, and V/Line services to Gippsland.
Opened in 1854 by the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company, the station, but not the current building, is the oldest in Australia, backing onto the Yarra River in the central business district. The complex now includes 13 platforms and structures that stretch over more than two city blocks, from east of Swanston Street west almost as far as Queen Street.
Flinders Street station is served by most Metro Trains services and V/Line regional services to Gippsland. It is the busiest station on Melbourne's metropolitan network, with an average of 77,153 daily entries recorded in the 2017/18 fiscal year. It was the terminus of the first railway in Australia (the Port Melbourne line) and was reputedly the world's busiest passenger station in the 1920s, although passenger numbers declined with a wider fall in train patronage after the Second World War and the opening of additional city stations on the City Loop – built to ease pressure on Flinders St – in the 1980s.
The main platform (operationally divided into platforms 1 and 14) is Australia's second longest, and the eighteenth-longest railway platform in the world. Trains at Flinders Street station connect with several tram services, and is the site of two of Melbourne's busiest pedestrian crossings, both across Flinders Street, including one of Melbourne's few pedestrian scrambles, at the junction with Elizabeth Street.
The current station building was completed in 1909 and is a cultural icon of Melbourne. The distinctive Edwardian building, with its prominent dome, arched entrance, tower and clocks is one of the city's most recognisable landmarks, and its grand character led to the popular myth that the design was actually intended for Mumbai's Victoria Terminus and vice versa, but was swapped in the post.
The Melbourne saying "I'll meet you under the clocks" refers to the row of indicator clocks above the main entrance, which show the next departure for each line; the alternative, "I'll meet you on the steps", refers to the wide staircase beneath the clocks.
It has been listed on the Victorian Heritage Register since 1982.
History Early terminus The first railway station to occupy the Flinders Street site was a collection of weatherboard train sheds. It was opened on 12 September 1854 by the Lieutenant-Governor, Charles Hotham. The terminus was the first city railway station in Australia, and the opening day saw the first steam train trip in Australia. The train travelled to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), over the since-reconstructed Sandridge Bridge and along what is now the light rail Port Melbourne line.
There is some confusion over the original name of the station. Leo Harrigan, in his book Victorian Railways to '62, writes that it was first named "Melbourne Terminus". Newspaper articles about the opening in September 1854 refer to "Melbourne terminus" with a lower case "t", which may have caused the misapprehension. Early tickets for the railway just show "Melbourne" as the destination. Yet H.K Atkinson, in his book Suburban Tickets of the Victorian Railways, lists the station as "Flinders Street" from its opening. Moreover, a newspaper report of December 1854 mentions that the Hobsons Bay Railway Company shareholder meeting was held at "Flinders Street Station". In all likelihood, the station was called "Melbourne, Flinders Street" from the outset, and the somewhat superfluous "Melbourne" was gradually dropped through common usage. When Prince's Bridge station opened across Swanston Street in 1859, the Flinders Street name would undoubtedly have become more prominent. The platforms for trains arriving from Station Pier retained the "Melbourne, Flinders Street" signage well into the twentieth century to minimise confusion for new visitors.
The first terminus had a single platform long, and was located beside the Fish Market building on the south-west corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets. An additional platform was provided in 1877, along with two overhead bridges to provide passenger access, followed in 1879 by additional timber and corrugated iron buildings, and a telegraph station. The first signal boxes were opened at the station in 1883, one at each end of the platforms. By the 1890s, a third island platform had been constructed. Melbourne's two other early central-city stations, Spencer Street and Princes Bridge, opened in 1859. Spencer Street served the lines to the west of the city, and was isolated from the eastern side of the network until a ground level railway was built connecting it to Flinders Street in 1879, this track being replaced by the Flinders Street Viaduct in 1889.
Princes Bridge station was originally separate from Flinders Street, even though it was only on the opposite side of Swanston Street. Once the railway line was extended under the street in 1865 to join the two, Princes Bridge was closed. It was reopened in April 1879, and from 1909 slowly became amalgamated into Flinders Street. Federation Square now occupies its site. Designs were prepared for a new Princes Street Station in the 1880s but not proceeded with.
Current building
By the 1880s, it was becoming clear that a new central passenger station was needed to replace the existing ad-hoc station buildings. A design competition was held in 1883, but the winning entry, by William Salway, featuring a pair of grandiose Italianate buildings either side of a yet-to-be-rebuilt Princes Bridge, was not built.
Well over a decade later, the Railway Commissioners prepared an in-house design for a new "Central Railway Station". It was published on 28 July 1898, and featured a dome on the corner and a clocktower at the Elizabeth Street end, and a large train shed roof over all the platforms. The Railways Standing Committee of the state parliament accepted the track and platform layout, the location of the concourse and entrances, and even the room layout to some extent, and recommended that it be funded. However, they were not satisfied with the architectural design, asking in April 1899 for a design competition "for the frontage"', with a closing date of August 1899. 17 entries were received, and the winners were announced on 28 May 1900.
The £500 first prize was awarded to railway employees James Fawcett and H. P. C. Ashworth (Fawcett and Ashworth), whose design, named Green Light, was described as being in the French Renaissance style. Like the Commissioners' design, it included a large dome over the main entrance, a tall clock tower over the Elizabeth Street entrance, an entrance opposite Degraves Street, and two subways. There was to be a train shed roof of corrugated iron over the platforms "supported by 12 columns", with minimal amounts of glass to protect against the summer sun (drawings of that have not survived). The Swanston Street elevation does survive, and shows an impressive three-arched roof running east–west, with a tall stained glass east end, which most likely was only to cover the concourse. The roof over the platforms may have been a similar arrangement of arches but across the lines rather than parallel.
In 1900, work began on the rearrangement of the station tracks, while the final design of the station building was still being worked on. Work on the central pedestrian subway started in 1901, and the foundations of the main building were completed by 1903.
In 1904, in mid-construction, the plans were extensively modified by the Railways Commissioners. The proposed single platform roof was replaced by individual platform roofs, and it was decided not to include the arched concourse roof. To increase office space, a fourth storey was added to the main building, which resulted in the arches above each entrance on Flinders Street being lowered, decreasing their dominance.
In 1905, work began on the station building itself, starting at the west end and progressing towards the main dome. Ballarat builder Peter Rodger was awarded the £93,000 contract. The building was originally to have been faced in stone, but that was considered too costly, so red brick, with cement render details, was used for the main building instead. Grey granite from Harcourt was used for many details at ground level on the Flinders Street side, "in view of the importance of this great public work". The southern façade of the main building consisted of a lightweight timber frame clad with zinc sheets, which were scored into blocks and painted red to look like large bricks. That was done to create corridors instead of what were to be open-access balconies inside the scrapped train shed.
Work on the dome started in 1906. The structure required heavy foundations because it extended over railway tracks. In May 1908, work was progressing more slowly than planned, with the expected completion date of April 1909 increasingly unlikely to be met. Rodger's contract was terminated in August 1908. A Royal Commission was appointed in May 1910, finding that Rodger could be held accountable for the slow progress in 1908, but he should be compensated for the difficulties before then. The Way and Works Branch of the Victorian Railways took over the project, and the station was essentially finished by mid-1909. The verandah along Flinders Street, and the concourse roof and verandah along Swanston Street, were not completed until after the official opening in 1910.
Frederick Karl Esling, superintending engineer, was responsible for building the new Flinders Street station, as well as the widening of Swanston Street over the railway lines, resolving the changing and complicated lay-out of the tracks at the station and yards, the duplication of the Flinders street railway viaduct, and rebuilding Princes Bridge Station.
The new Flinders Street station building had three levels at the concourse, or Swanston Street, end, and four at the lower Elizabeth Street end. Numerous shops and lettable spaces were provided, some on the concourse, but especially along the Flinders Street frontage, many at lower than street level, accessed by stairs, which created a fifth or basement level. The top three levels of the main building contained a large number of rooms, particularly along the Flinders Street frontage, mostly intended for railway use, but also many as lettable spaces. Numerous ticket windows were located at each entry, with services, such as a restaurant, country booking office, lost luggage office and visitors help booth, at the concourse or platform level. Much of the top floor was purpose-built for the then new Victorian Railway Institute, including a library, gym, and lecture hall which was later used as a ballroom. Those rooms have been largely abandoned and decaying since the 1980s.
For a number of years in the 1930s and 1940s, the building featured a creche next to the main dome on the top floor, with an open-air playground on an adjoining roof. Since 1910, the basement store beside the main entrance has been occupied by a hat shop, known as "City Hatters" since 1933.
The first electric train service operated from Flinders Street to Essendon in 1919, and by 1923 it was thought to be the world's busiest passenger station, with 2300 trains and 300,000 passengers daily. In 1954, to cater for increasing traffic, as well as for the 1956 Summer Olympics, the Degraves Street subway from the station was extended to the north side of Flinders Street, creating Campbell Arcade. In March 1966, platform 1 was extended to long.
Redevelopment plans