I am probably one of very few people who actually likes going forth and back on trains. While there is something deeply satisfying about jumping into a motor car and being in control of more than a tonne of metal at 60km/h, the idea that we're all moving in a thing weighing hundreds of tonnes and moving at more than 100km/h is fun in a different way. The whole sensation of scenery being pushed past the window while we are travelling without moving is special.
I also love the necessary infrastructure which makes up the built environment that makes all of this possible. Some of our great public buildings are working cathedrals to journey making and being inside a vaulted space while people move through almost oblivious to it, is itself a kind of metaphor for modernity. It is almost as if in our rush to modernity and trying to scrape away the past, we still have some innate need to pass through sacred spaces even though we are constantly too busy to appreciate them.
It should come as no surprise that the most famous of stories which used trains as the cultural overlay was written by a Reverend.
Of course a massively complex system like a network of railways, although governed by rules and regulations, is by virtue of being very capital intensive, going to leave behind very big detritus. You can see this with the sheer number of sidings, signal sets, and even platforms and entire stations and lines that get left behind when things are abandoned and replaced. As a commuter, we occasionally see this as physical stuff left behind but on rare occasions there are some really odd intangible consequences.
Blacktown Station in Sydney's west originally four platforms as best as I can determine. They would have been numbered 1-4. When the Richmond branch was opened, that meant that there was a new 1 & 2 and the existing platforms were numbered 3-6. When the new concourse was opened in 1995, that also came with a new platform in the V between platforms 2 & 3. That new platform was numbered as 3 and the existing platforms were renumbered again as 4-7. However, I recently learnt that the two sidings to the north of the station are also considered to be platforms; which actually invites the possibility that if numbered that they could be 0 and -1 or -1 and -2.
This is not altogether silly as Lidcombe Station famously has a Platform 0 which is signposted as such; which was built for the shuttle line between Lidcombe and Olympic Park. The curious thing about Olympic Park Station is that although it only has two tracks that operate as one way tracks, it has both island and river platforms which are either side of the tracks, which means that there are platforms 1-4. It is possible to have one train arrive on platforms 1 & 2 simultaneously, if it opens the doors on both sides of the carriages.
Sydney Terminal/Central Electric/Central Station currently has platforms 1-12 and 16-25 that can be visited. Platforms 26 and 27 officially exist but the public is not allowed to visit them. Platforms 13-15 have been demolished to make space for construction of the South West Metro line. I think that this poses a problem. If the Metro is two platforms as I suspect that it will be, then they will likely be numbered as 14 and 15. Platform 13 will cease to exist; which is either a bit sad or a bit fun as Platform 13 could end up being a fake platform for ghost trains
The idea of missing numbered platforms isn't new to Sydney either. Wynyard Station was opened with six platforms and when the Cahill Expressway was opened, the demolition and closure of tram lines. Wynyard had underground trams arrive on platforms 1 & 2 and when those platforms were closed and a wall put up to separate the space which was then claimed for a car park, Wynyard was not renumbered.
That also begs the question of what the platforms at Central Station-Chalmers St are numbered as. I do not recall ever seeing platform numbers on any of the tram platforms; so I suspect that they do not have any. That's a bit sad as almost by default, they should probably be numbered starting at 1 with an up running line.
The weirdest anomaly of all is the Platform 9 bar at Strathfield Station. Not only is it not a platform, it is on the wrong side of the station to be numbered as 9. If the same logic was applied to it as Lidcombe Station then it should by rights be the Platform 0 Bar but that sounds really horky borky. Admittedly this concerns only a very few select number of people and is only enough to rile up maybe one in a million but that's eight of us in New South Wales. We should start a very small convention.
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