For a very very long time I have suspected that there are secret extra bonus railway stations which exist somewhere between other stations. Now bear in mind that these are different to places like Hilldale, Mindaribba, Martins Creek, or Wondabyne where platforms definitely do exist albeit rather short ones, or places like Lysaghts which are almost exclusively employee only stations. These are not even phantom stations like Woolahra or Clyburn which either did or could have existed. No, these secret extra bonus stations are another thing entirely.
Strathbush
I almost understand the existence of Strathbush Station. This station which totally does doesn't does exist, lies somewhere in between Strathfield and Homebush.
Homebush at one time, was the terminus of the electric train system. Essentially, Homebush is a 6 platform switching yard, with an attached Y-link from the Western to the Northern Line.
Strathbush Station exists as a holding place, to keep scheduled T1 Western Line trains, held still, while specials like the Indian-Pacific, or goods trains, pass through.
However, Strathbush also exists to hold trains standing around for absolutely no good reason at all, while goodness knows what happens.
Wavercraft
Now I completely understand the need to either have trains skip stations on the run towards the City to make timetables work, or perhaps deliberately backing them up so that there is a whole arsenal of them waiting for the evening peak, however having trains stop at Wavercraft in the mornings, just defies all earthly logic.
Ever since the Northwest Metro stole away two tracks that would have been used at Chatswood, the entire North Shore line from Wynyard all the way to Gordon is functionally just two tracks; being the Up and Down line. Wavercraft means stopping trains on the Down line heading away from the City for reasons that make no sense to me.
Is it because there is a degree of fudge built into the timetable; so this means that stations like Chatswood and Gordon then become the points at which on time or early/late running trains are measured? Is this because of bus connections heading away from the City? Who knows?
What makes this all the more mind numbingly bonkers is that during the middle of the day, places like Waverton, Wollstonecraft, and Artarmon, get perfectly good trains that pass through and don't stop at stations, only to have them stop at Wavercraft which isn't even real.
Barangaroo North
The third and final of this imaginary trio deserves a photograph:
Barangaroo North is more bonkers than either Strathbush or Wavercraft because unlike the first which holds up suburban trains for untimetabled specials, or the second which might hold up trains for statistical purposes, Barangaroo North isn't even on a timetabled service. Trains on the Northwest Metro are driverless and because they don't need to interact with any other line, only need to be switched at the two termini at either end.
What possible reason is there for stopping at Barangaroo North? You can't get off. There isn't any need to change the drivers which don't exist. There's not even a reason to do with the timetable.
The trains on the Northwest Metro are driverless which means that they are in principle, not a lot different to very fancy elevators. It's just that they are longer and go sideways. When you also consider that block systems and dead-man switches have been around since the first half of the twentieth century and driverless trains in operations since 1998, then the idea that trains need to stop here in particular is quite frankly, weird.
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By my reckoning there are 10 suburban lines in Sydney; which also share interurban lines, and there may be about 400 sets of trains. By any kind of reckoning, that's a lot of moving parts that all have to be timetabled and orchestrated. So I completely understand that there will be stops and pauses.
The fact that there are consistently inconsistent consistent stops and pauses, suggests to me that if these aren't explicitly the results of a designed system, that they are the defaults of automatic/mechanical/AI/human systems that regularly arrive at the same conclusions because that's sensible.
It could also be that as an electro-mechanical meatbag human with a pattern seeking set of biases, that I have found my patterns. Well done, me. I am still confused by Barangaroo North though.
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