Commuters waited 30 years for Circular Quay’s first train
COMMUTERS had been waiting 30 years but the first passenger train finally arrived at Circular Quay station 60 years ago today, the 5.50am from Mortdale.
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“Our train didn’t cross Our Bridge today, but took a new turn — down by Our ’Arbor to Circular Quay,” a Melbourne newspaper sniggered 60 years ago. True, it had taken 30 years but commuters could finally loop around Sydney city, dramatically emerging from tunnels to catch a glimpse across the harbour along the way. Gone were decades of pedestrian and traffic disruption while drills bored 30m through the sandy Tank Stream estuary to hit bedrock below the Quay.
The first regular train at Circular Quay station 60 years ago today, on Sunday, January 22, 1956, was the 5.50am from Mortdale. Thousands of spectators had gathered in drizzling rain at 10.10am two days earlier to watch NSW premier Joe Cahill officially open the £4 million station.
As plans to reshape harbour foreshores for commercial shipping wharves evolved from the 1830s, construction of a Circular Quay railway station consumed the city’s imagination from the 1870s, when Sydney’s main rail lines terminated at Redfern.
From the 1880s, and under the Sydney Harbour Trust in 1900, ferry commuter wharves began to dominate Circular Quay, the termination point for ferries and trams.
Sydneysiders met in January 1883 at the Temperance Hall in Pitt St to “consider the necessity of urging upon the government the desirableness of extending the railway line from the Redfern station to the waters of the harbour at Circular Quay”.
The opening of Central Station in 1906 marginally improved the situation, and the 1909 City of Sydney Royal Commission kicked off planning for a Circular Quay station.
Railway Resource Centre manager and engineer Bill Phippen explains that World War I, followed by the Great Depression, then another world war, caused a succession of delays in completing the Circular Quay link.
Debate raged in 1915 between NSW Railways Commissioner James Fraser, who wanted a station on Harrington St, and NSW Public Works engineer John Bradfield, who wanted an elevated railway station at Circular Quay to link with existing tram and ferry services.
Phippen explains Fraser wanted to minimise controversial property resumptions, although Bradfield’s concept for a showpiece station across the Quay was also controversial, as it blocked views across Sydney Harbour.
“The government at one stage wanted to build it underground,” Phippen says.
“There were endless newspaper stories about it.”
When the state government decided in Bradfield’s favour, in 1924 he produced drawings of a “grand ‘elevated’ open-air station” of a similar style to Central Station.
Work on Bradfield’s city rail loop began in 1917, with trains leaving Central for St James station via Museum by 1926. Indecision over a bridge or tunnel crossing for Sydney Harbour delayed a western rail link until February 1932, when Wynyard station opened to link with the new Harbour Bridge. With tunnels from St James and Wynyard to Circular Quay also completed, the eastern tunnel to St James housed mushrooms until the mid 1930s. In World War II both Circular Quay tunnels served as air raid shelters.
As politicians complained that failure to complete the station was “devastating” local businesses, a newspaper correspondent described Circular Quay as an “expensive wreck”.
Sydney architects Henry Budden and Nicholas Mackey were commissioned to complete an initial station design, reviewed by a Circular Quay Planning Committee in 1936. The committee, comprised mainly of engineers, decided the station should have a colonnade along the water, use natural materials for external surfaces, and have unimpeded ground level views from the water to the street.
More inflammatory was the committee’s 1937 report, completed under chairman John Butters, which advised: “It has been determined that a superimposed roadway shall be built over the railway connecting Bradfield Highway with Macquarie Street.” Newspaper letters complained that if existing plans were adopted, “citizens will ultimately find themselves in possession of an architectural monstrosity”.
World War II stopped all work on Circular Quay Station. A supervisory committee established in 1948 was directed to reduce the structure’s overall height while retaining an overhead roadway, and allow better views from street to harbour.
The 12 spans of the 26m Circular Quay railway viaduct were completed between 1938 and 1956. The completed station retained a pre-World War II Inter-War Functionalist style, incorporating horizontal bands of windows for a streamlined effect, with Art Deco features in metal framed windows and ornamental grilles.
Senior Sydney electric train driver Bill Winter, 66, drove the first train, “loaded to the gunwale with politicians”, into Circular Quay on January 20, 1956.
Transport Minister Ernie Wetherell “had his hands on the controls when it crossed the line. Or, rather, he had his hands on Bill Winter’s hands, whose hands were on the controls. Reg Winsor, Railways Commissioner, also had a little drive,” newspapers noted.
The Railway Resource Centre is the archives section of the Australian Railway Historical Society NSW Division; www.arhsnsw.com.au
Originally published as Commuters waited 30 years for Circular Quay’s first train
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