Central is a heritage-listed railway station located in the centre of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The station is Australia's largest and busiest railway station, and is a major transport interchange for NSW TrainLink inter-city rail services, Sydney Trains commuter rail services, Sydney Metro services, Sydney Light Rail services, bus services, and private coach transport services. The station is also known as Sydney Terminal (Platforms 1 to 12). The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . It recorded 85.4 million passenger movements in 2018 and serves over 250,000 people daily.
Central station occupies a large city block separating , Surry Hills and the central business district, bounded by Railway Square and Pitt Street in the west, Eddy Avenue in the north, Elizabeth Street in the east and the Devonshire Street Tunnel in the south. Parts of the station and marshalling yards extend as far south as Cleveland Street, and are located on the site of the former Devonshire Street Cemetery.
History There have been three terminal stations in Sydney.
First Sydney terminal The railway arrived in New South Wales in 1831. Proposals began in the 1840s for a railway linking Sydney and Parramatta, with an eastern terminus close to the Sydney city centre.
Although the Sydney Railway Company first applied to the government for four blocks of land between Hay and Cleveland streets in 1849, the Surveyor General favoured Grose Farm, now the grounds of the University of Sydney. It was further from the city and less costly to develop. The company finally exchanged land in the first, second and third blocks, between Hay and Devonshire Streets, for an increased area of in the fourth block, the Government Paddocks, between Devonshire and Cleveland Streets. Hence, the site of the first Sydney railway terminus was located here from 1855.
The original Sydney station was opened on 26 September 1855 in an area known as Cleveland Fields. It was a temporary timber and corrugated iron building, constructed rapidly in late August to early September 1855, in time for the opening of the line to Parramatta for passenger trains.
This station (one wooden platform in a corrugated iron shed), called "Sydney Terminal", had Devonshire Street as its northern boundary. It was frequently but unofficially called "Redfern Station", while at that time, the present Redfern Station was officially called "Eveleigh". Although called "Redfern Station", the first and second Sydney Terminals were never actually located in Redfern, being to the north of Cleveland Street, which is Redfern's northern boundary.
The first and second station buildings were both in the form of a shed which covered the main line. A photograph of the exterior of the first station taken in 1871 shows vertical boarding, windows with a hood and a corrugated iron roof, with a roof vent. Internally, the stud framing and timber truss roof members were exposed. The offices and public facilities were contained in the adjacent lean-to, which faced George Street.
Only one platform and the main up-line served the passenger station. A similar platform and line layout was used for the Mortuary Station, constructed 15 years later; however, the level of detail and materials varied considerably. The first station building was extended almost immediately, a shed being constructed at the southern end to cover an additional of platform.
Second Sydney terminal When the station became inadequate for the traffic it carried, a new station was built in 1874 on the same site and was also called Sydney Terminal.
The Second Sydney Terminal was a more substantial brick station building, initially with two platforms. The second station building was constructed on the site of the first station, the main hall spanning the up and down mainlines. Separate platforms and facilities were provided for arriving and departing passengers. The new station building appears to have taken three years to complete: the drawings are dated 1871, while the official opening was in 1874. The second station, like the first, was constructed to allow for a future extension of the line into the city, the lines initially extending just far enough past the building to accommodate a steam locomotive.
John Whitton, the engineer-in-chief, designed a neo-classical station building to be constructed of brick, with the decorative detail formed using polychromatic and relief work. Almost immediately the demand for platform space during peak times resulted in additional branch lines and platforms being constructed adjacent to the passenger station. These lines were brought in front of the station, obscuring it from view and isolating the verandah. By 1890 Whitton's station building had become engulfed within a sea of sheds and tram platform canopies. The second Redfern station, demolished following the completion of the first stage of the main terminal building , was a gloomy building, the glass in the roof lantern not permitting a great deal of light to enter and the soot from the steam locomotives coating the surfaces with grime.
The second station grew to 14 platforms before it was replaced by the present-day station to the north of Devonshire Street.
Proposals for extension into the city In major metropolitan areas the rail terminus tended to be located within the inner core of the city. The site of the first and second station termini was inconveniently located for the city. Initially, a horse-drawn omnibus service operated from the station to the city and both the engineer-in-chief, John Whitton, and the Chief Commissioner for Railways, B. H. Martindale, recognised the urgency of a city rail extension.
In 1877, John Young, a prominent Sydney builder and local politician, proposed a scheme to provide a circular city extension to the railway. The route included stations at Oxford Street, William Street and Woolloomooloo in the east, Circular Quay, then Dawes Point and a line parallel to Darling Harbour in the west. John Whitton designed a grand city terminus at the corner of Hunter and Castlereagh Streets two years later. Neither of these schemes eventuated.
In 1895, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works advised that a royal commission should be constituted to "inquire into the question of bringing the railway from its present terminus at Redfern into the city". The findings of the commission, favouring a site in St James Road, were released in 1897. The term Central Station was now in common use. The public works annual report of 1896–1897 noted that "the Railway Construction Branch was called upon to furnish voluminous plans and estimates of the cost of the various proposals brought before the commission. After a most exhaustive investigation, the Royal Commission reported, almost unanimously, in favour of the extension of the railway into the city by the route and according to the plan as described as the St James Road Scheme".In 1897, Norman Selfe drew up a scheme for the gradual enlargement and extension of the railway to the northern end of the city and in the same year Railway Commissioner, E. M. G. Eddy, proposed a terminal city station at the corner of Elizabeth Street and St James' Road. The route of the latter was virtually the same as that for 1879, however, the new site for the terminus included half of the northern end of Hyde Park. Although of the burial ground in Devonshire Street was offered as compensation, public sentiment still opposed the loss of Hyde Park.
The initial designs for a near Sydney Terminal were prepared by Henry Deane, the Engineer-in-Chief of Railway Construction in consultation with the Railway Commissioners. Deane is reputed to have prepared 10 schemes for the royal commission. Although the St James location was preferred, a scheme that did not involve the disturbance of or use of land in Hyde Park was sought. The extension of Belmore Park was initially proposed in the 1897 scheme as compensation for the use of the northwestern corner of Hyde Park as a railway station. Following a change of government the St James scheme was abandoned and Deane prepared, , a further two schemes, one of which was for the Old Burial Ground Site.The royal commission in 1897 again considered the city railway extension because of dangerous congestion at Redfern and recommended using Hyde Park. Then, after an investigative trip overseas, Henry Deane prepared alternative proposals for a new railway terminal for the government in 1900. The second scheme proposal called for the resumption of the Devonshire Street cemeteries, but this was cheaper and less contentious than the acquisition of Hyde Park. It was the second scheme which was eventually adopted.
The earlier schemes to extend the lines further into the city would have been prohibitively expensive and would have required large scale resumptions. The site of the Old Burial ground was, in comparison, relatively easily obtainable as no private land was involved. Due to the extent of the resumption there would, in addition to a terminus, be room for the extension of the goods yard and the erection of a carriage shed and post office. The existing lines were at a higher level than the Burial Ground, so rather than lowering the existing railway track, the tramlines were to be raised to serve a high level station. The Public Works Committee passed the design on 7 June 1900, however, a much modified building was actually constructed.
The total estimated cost of the works was to be with the general works estimated at , the Station Building estimated at and the Resumptions estimated at . Almost immediately these estimates proved conservative, there was much public concern regarding the removal of bodies from the Old Burial ground and a new cemetery, the Botany Cemetery, had to be constructed, at public expense, at La Perouse.
Third Sydney terminal (Central station) Devonshire Street Cemetery work and construction of third Sydney terminal
When the third station was built in 1906, it moved one block north, closer to the city. It fronted Garden Road, which was realigned to form Eddy Avenue. If Belmore Park is included, all the land now occupied by the railway at Central and Redfern coincides with the company's original selection of four blocks between Hay and Cleveland Streets. The present station was officially opened on 4 August 1906 and opening for passengers on 5 August 1906.
During Governor Macquarie's term, the future site of the Sydney Terminal was beyond the limits of settlement, which were marked by the tollhouse located at the end of George Street and at the entrance to Railway Square.
Central station was designed by the government architect, Walter Liberty Vernon. The new station was built on a site previously occupied by the Devonshire Street Cemetery, South Sydney Morgue, the Convent of the Good Samaritan, the Sydney Female Refuge, police barracks and superintendent's residence (on Pitt Street), Christ Church Parsonage, the Benevolent Asylum (fronting Railway Square), a steam train depot (at the corner of Pitt Street with Garden Road), as well as some residential properties on Railway Place. The convent, female refuge and police barracks were all original part of "Carters Barracks", built in 1819 to house convict gangs working as carters on the brick fields. The adjacent field which is today Belmore Park was known as the "police paddock", after the police barracks.
The remains exhumed from the cemetery were re-interred at several other Sydney cemeteries including Rookwood and Waverley cemeteries. Bodies were moved to Botany by steam tram motors and flat cars.
Terminus redesign