Greater Sydney, that is the whole of the metropolis and not just the area covered by the local government area of the City Of Sydney, is an unwieldy conurbation which is home to more than 5 millions of people. A city of 5 millions is not particularly massive when compared with London, Paris, Tokyo, or Mexico City but in terms of the area covered, Sydney is huge. Broadly speaking, the natural boundaries of Sydney are square of 80 kilometers by 80 kilometers and bounded on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the Pacific Ocean.
In my travels (mostly deliberately), I have visited every station on the Sydney Trains Network and so I have already visited every station in this series of posts, previously. While this series of posts may appear to be a duplicate, it serves a slightly different purpose. Namely, that because Sydney is so massively massive and dendritic in nature, the ends of the various lines tend to be outposts. Going to every one of the stations at the end of the line may as well be like setting foot upon the moon. Indeed as the ones in the centre (Wynyard, Town Hall, and Central) are the busiest, and the others on the City Circle are the prettiest (Circular Quay, St James, and Museum), the ones right at the very edges tend to be quite and spooky.
This is their story.
The End Of The Line: Emu Plains
Being 57 kilometers from Central, Emu Plains probably technically isn't even a suburb of Sydney but rather a suburb of Penrith, if Penrith is actually considered to be a regional centre in the same way that Wollongong is.
What is all the way out here? Precious little.
Unlike other stations where you might hope to step off the train and buy a pie, Emu Plains was within walking distance of a bakery which was closed. It probably opens first thing in the morning and does a coffee and pastry trade, and then is open for lunch but at 3pm in the afternoon, it like all hope, was closed.
One could argue that O'Donohue's Pun which is within walking distance might be sufficient reason to make the journey out here but the truth in point is that not even the locals shop here. Emu Plains is within the shadow of Westfield Penrith; which has supermarkets and all the shops one could hope for. There is a factory which makes Recreational Vehicles and Caravans but apart from this, Emu Plains is almost entirely surrounded by low density housing. Again, unlike Penrith which on the northern side of the station has blocks of flats that look almost Soviet in their brutality and which has crowds which gush and flow, Emu Plains has single digit people who occasionally show up. As we shall see like so many other stations at the end of the line, Emu Plains is almost but not quite rural.
The station itself is a river-type, with two platforms; with Platform 1 being the upline towards Central and Platform 2 being the downline from Central. As Emu Plains is a river-type station, the fences to keep people out run on the outer edges of the platform and what amounts to rather tall domestic fencing to serve that purpose.
Like a number of these stations in Sydney, the end of the line does not mean the end of the railway. Unlike other cities in the world, Sydney has full-size pullman cars which travel over heavy rail, which it shares with intercity trains and freight trains. It is possible to see a normal 8-car Suburban Train, being passed by an interurban train to Lithgow, or a 38-truck coal train, or thr Indian Pacific to Perth, at this station.
This 'end point' as the western end of the Western Line, is where drivers arriving in 4, 6, 8, and 10 car trains, should get their cabs to stop. Emu Plains is not necessarily unique in this but owing to the fact that the overpass bridge is also at this end, it does mean that this is the end of the platform that the drivers will line their cabs up at on their trains.
On this particular journey the driver stopped, got out of the train, walked past the ticket bollards and outside of the station, and had a cigarette before he and the guard who was at the other end of the train, swapped ends for the return journey back to Central. I suppose that as railway stations have been smoke free since the change of legislation back in 2000, that leaving the station is the only way that a driver can nip out for a durry. This is after all, a workplace environment. Also considering that there was a bit of time before the train left to go back to Central and Emu Plains is so mind-numblingly quiet, that scraping away the edges of boredom with Carolina's finest, seems as good an option as any.
To the west of the western end of the Western Line, is the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains which are so named because from far away they apperently look blue, can be seen from my home station of Marayong or even from the span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
From here, the line if still relatively flat before it hooks a left and then makes the slow climb up the mountains, starting with the Lapstone Incline. On this particular day, the weather was pretty nice but as Emu Plains lacks proper waiting rooms, in rainy or windy weather, this place is unpleasant.
Even though this place is on the edge of being in the middle of nowhere, Emu Plains does have ticket machines, bins, and awnings; which means that this place still feels like a normal suburban station unlike places like Carlingford used to. The overpass even has lift access and the station is accessible by ramp; which means that this is useful for wheelchairs, and people with prams.
Emu Plains used to be a single platform station with the other track being used as a crossover and bypass. The older stone heritage listed building was opened in 1907 but it was closed when I arrived and I suspect that the station was unattended. I could not see what was inside.
I arrived here at about 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon and only one person apart from me was on the train at this time. Going back the other way, three people including me got on the train; which for a thing which can hold 2000 people in peak periods, is very very quiet.
Virtually all of the sets that run to Emu Plains are A-Sets; which I have to say are very very nice places to be sat sitting in as a commuter. If it is windy and cold and awful outside, then a warm place like an A-Set at Emu Plains would be a welcome refuge.
Trains from all the way out here are likely to stop at Penrith, Blacktown, then Parramatta, Strathfield and Redfern before Central; with the slow trains infilling all stations to Blacktown and that's about it. Richmond Line and Cumberland Line trains infill Seven Hills to Westmead, and Southern Line and Inner City Line trains infill the rest.
If you were to sum up the vibe of Emu Plains, it would be that this place is quiet and serene; which is quite apt considering that this is the end of the line out west. The fact that there is not much out here, means that this is unlikely to be a destination unless you really want to go to O'Donohue's and want to take the train back home as a responsible person.
<><><><><>
All that this leaves me to do is that my many zeroes of thousand's supporters on Ko-Fi and Patreon. You are my non-existent pie to my disappointingly closed bakery. As this is a haphazard series which will only appear after I have been somewhere else, then the next one will be on an ad hoc and ab surdium basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment