The Entire History of Sydney's Eastern Suburbs Railway
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- Brain no work, make big video again :(
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Cool people who contributed footage and that you should check out:
@BuildingBeautifully
@karatransitfur
@forkast
Main Source:
(Seriously, go read it, his work is fantastic, you will need an ARHS membership to read it though, but if you’re the kind of nerd that watched an hour long video on the ESR, you’re missing out by not having one)
Brady, I.A 1979, Eastern Suburbs Railway for Sydney, in ARHS Bulletin, July 1979, vol. 30, no. 501, pp. 146-171, arhs.recollect...
Brady, I.A 1979, Eastern Suburbs Railway for Sydney, in ARHS Bulletin, August 1979, vol. 30, no. 502, pp. 173-188, arhs.recollect...
Brady, I.A 1979, Eastern Suburbs Railway for Sydney, in ARHS Bulletin, September 1979, vol. 30, no. 503, pp. 210-221, arhs.recollect...
Sources Document:
docs.google.co...
Thanks for the video, I worked for a small sign company which had the new South Wales railway contracts and I've never seen so many signs that I built in one place before, I'm glad you liked the sign above the martin place ticket office. Most if not all the indicators, signs and direction sign I built over the years from 1976 to 1996 when I moved to tassies no longer exist. It was really nice to be able to point them out to my wife.
Ps, i used to be Michael Catons next door neighbour in Regent street Paddington, he didnt exactly cover himself in glory as a neighbour.
Michael Caton is a nimby. The Castle while being an Aussie classic, is a NIMBY anthem and represents their worldview
Well done, strong effort. I actually worked on the opening crew on the Eastern Suburbs Railway. The public open day was amazing as well as very crowded. By memory the ESR used 225,000 cubic metres of concrete. The ticketing system confused many. Brings back memories.
Today the Eastern burbs stations look as worn and tired as other parts of the network, with a layer of dirt and grime accumulated over the decades of operation... but it's fascinating to see the pictures of them when they were new. Being so clean and adorned with distinctive furnishings makes you realise they once looked actually impressive.
Sad to see that petaled roof feature at Bondi Junction in the pic is now gone and replaced with a generic white ceiling. The original distinctive looking furniture has been replaced by generic benches, and the flooring has also now changed to some generic brown brick for Martin Place. Needless to say the ESR is no longer the pride of the network that it once was.
Your passion is palpable, this video, fabulous. Thanks for the effort.
Well done! Amazing video!
The ESR stations are gorgeous.
As a 10 year old I loved my Grandma taking me and my sister and brother on the brand new train line to Bondi Junction. The novelty of putting a magnetic ticket into the gate and it shot out your fingers for you to collect as you walked through was lots of fun. So novel compared to the small cardboard tickets for other lines that the staff tore in half as you showed it to them to enter and exit. The platform escalators were some of the longest in Sydney at the time too. Exciting and new.
Eastern suburbs nimby's killed it.
Excellent Video. The ESR stations are such an iconic design.
Fascinating! I grew up in the west of Sydney, and visiting the eastern suburbs felt like an overseas holiday. These days, I like to explore the eastern suburbs on foot once or twice each year, which means using the ESR and the bus/rail interchanges. I agree with you that the photos of the original designs were stunning. I’m sure you’ve seen the official ESR promotional video from 1979?
As someone who has started using the T4 and getting into transport stuff recently, this video was released at the perfect time
Such a great video, love how the bloopers are just extra bits of random info.
It seems surprising that Sydney never got a privately-built tube railway given how many were proposed over in London around that time and how many of the plans in this video propose underwater tunnels.
Great stuff - more please
Great stuff. Interesting take on the modernist architecture - I remember being rather underwhelmed at the time, all a bit clunky.
I remember riding the Eastern Suburbs line in the 80s and 90s and feeling how different their stations felt to the rest of the City. The City Circle stations felt like London stations. To me, the Eastern Suburbs stations felt more like the New York subway. In retrospect, I now kind of feel the Eastern Suburbs stations felt uniquely Sydney. Not "Let's try hard to make something that looks like Sydney". More "Lets do something unique" which then went on to become the Sydney look. A subtle difference.
Actually we did have a form of railway mania. Here in what then was the Colony of Victoria. The infamous (nicknamed) Octopus Acts In 1880 & 1884 which authorised in 2 acts the construction of 89 new rail lines/branches and a doubling in route mileage over the then existing routes. Great video though. Enjoyed it.
Also, that's how Melbourne wound up with three disconnected terminal stations at Spencer St, Flinders St and Princes Bridge. It wasn't till VR absorbed all the private railways that these termini were connected together.
Good video - well done!
I was on a train that went to Bondi Junction when it opened in 1979. By the way the 333 bus which goes from Circular Quay to North Bondi via Bondi Beach and back is really well partonised. By that I mean it gets full by the time it gets to Bondi Junction. Another thing is that the bus runs about every 5 to 10 minutes in either direction. If the locals think that people coming to Bondi Beach are going to create social problems are wrong. I been to Bondi Beach many times and the people that come to visit Bondi Beach are local and overseas tourists. These people spend money at local retailers and hoteliers who remain in business due to the influx of people.
I’m watching this while on the t4 to Edgecliff
I went on the ESR on the first day it was open to the public in 79
Must have been incredible. I didn't see any of it until 1985 and ride it until the following year.
@@Jeansieguy I did as well
just amazing !!!
Wake up babe, the new City Connections video just dropped
oh no :(
Erskineville, not Erskinville! ok I'll shut up! Great video! Lots of information I wasn't even aware of. Loved it!
AAA That's my punishment for having fat fingers. Glad you enjoyed it though!
Fascinating video mate! Good stuff 😁
Other comments from bits I'm aware of.
- the Govt had acquired some property for abive ground extension south of Bondi, but it was sold off in the 80s.
- there was also a proposal in the 00s for a station near the Art Gallery (building over the existing turnout) which might have also served Woolloomooloo
- despite the high density in the East with only 3 stations the line is way under capacity, and arguably does need an extension to balance the Illawarra/Cromulla section
Also initially it had been planned for all bus routes to terminate at the stations, ergo the large interchanges at Edgecliff and Bondi Junction, but this was unpopular with passengers, hence the 32x buses still continuing to the city today
(Notabky todays government is trying the same thing with Northern Sydney buses not going over the bridge once the Metro opens, albeit without a decent bus interchange in North Sydney)
Fantastic video, well done! Pretty interesting that a smaller version of the Green southern line kind of did end up being made, with the Sydney Metro going from Sydenham to Central via Waterloo and connecting to the Bankstown line 28:40
Some of those archive photos are blurry because they were captured on PAL analogue video. Probably not VHS but some kind of tape. The horizontal resolution is lower than the vertical resolution, something you only find on analogue video.
Wow, Aussies really love(d) their railway loops
AMAZING VIDEO!
Thanks Aks :)
‘Doesn’t want Bondi to become like the Gold Coast’ whilst ignoring that the Gold Coast is nicer than Bondi
The Gold Coast is pretty meh. Bondi at least has good food
That was epic! Great content. There's a place for deep dives and I enjoy your natural presentation style.
Loved the people randomly disappearing in the background. As each entered frame I kept thinking "Will this one survive or vanish?" It added to the authenticity.
Have to disagree about the over-saturated ESR architecture though. It's probably the only style in the Sydney system that I genuinely loathe. Too decadent for me. Now Stockholm; there's a city that knows how to do an underground station. Ah, Swedish au naturel.!
I vehemently love both of these examples, and will only cringe at the boring "can't be a**ed" options you get in cities with no pride. Washington DC Metro, love it or love it, you can't tell me it hasn't got a vibe and that's not preferable to a cheap basic forgettable design. ESRL had a very fashionable trend of its time, and due to being born in the decade it was designed in, is what I grew up to find as "the new hotness": Imagine this was the only thing that existed which wasn't Victorian and crumbling. This is also why certain folks, again usually my age, crave some good examples of brutalism. And in all cases, there's just NO way to judge this until everybody dies and you have the long lens of history, a century has to pass. We were knocking down terrace houses and spewing our guts over them when I was a kid, and now … they're "walkable"! Turns out you can renovate interiors til the cows come home. Case in point: Central Station had a 1970s makeover for the ESRL - same as is happening now for the Sydney Metro. What did they mean? Bright round plastic benches, circular ones everywhere. And matching décor besides. All long forgotten now, and there was enough cringing about it in the 1980s that a kid growing up in the 1990s was never even aware it had happened. Erasure!
The airport - Alexandria area used to flood badly in the fifties through till the late eighties.
Great video! Obviously much research went into this.
What you say about nimbyism destroying the Bondi Beach extension is spot on. I remember an otherwise decent person opining that the line would bring in undesirables, which I found disgusting. They apparently were happy to go to other people's areas themselves. That the same undesirables could also drive there or get a bus, didn't seem to count, for some reason. And the resulting traffic issues have just gotten worse but somehow also didn't count. A railway encouraging multi-storey development seems unlikely, as IIRC a lot of the area literally couldn't support it geohysically (being largely sand deposits in the low areas).
You mention one of the South Eastern suburbs schemes including a platform at Redfern, and this was built and is still there beside the existing Bondi Junction (ESR) platforms (separated by a wall). I guess what you refer to as the Chalmers st Platforms are the unused platforms 26/27?
I don't recall what those platforms were for, but the Chlamers street platforms began work around 1948, so it's likely they were for additional lines like the South-Eastern and Southern suburbs lines. I'm guessing if anything, they were built as a backup in case they needed additional city railway platforms, just like the additional platforms at Redfern and Wynyard.
Glad thy snuck this in before nimbys existed, wouldnt have happened if not
The green “grain” is from the flouro tubes. All The pics taken in the underground/interiors are lit by fluorescent tubes, and these affect the film with a greenish tint. It’s something to do with the tubes frequency and light spectrum output.
And the very first railway which went from Central to Strathfield was government built
In fact the NSW railway was the first government railway in the world at the time
I really enjoyed how this video wrapped together the entire mess of early proposals to extend the railway into the city. I like the way the under-Parramatta-Road one resembles a few other countries who took that option around the same decade, e.g. San Francisco, Brussels. It's painfully obvious and useful, though is it pleasant? I'd probably prefer modern light rail down the centre of Parramatta Road and Victoria Road. The original Northwest Metro proposal did swing south from Epping and head under Drummoyne and Rozelle though, and feels very necessary even now. I'll have to enjoy the amazing Victoria Cross station as the consolation prize - and what a prize.
Well, he nailed Bathurst. That usually sorts out the interlopers.
It was a transformative project for Sydney removing the Sutherland/Cronulla lines from the Circle allowing expansion of services on other critical lines.
Rode on this on the opening day to Bondi and back to Central, don't think Redfern was open but may be wrong.
It wasn't! It opened a year later in 1980
You would still have had to go through Redfern but they are above ground lines
There's 4 kinds of inflation for long periods, and measuring it differently will give you different results by orders of magnitude.
cool hat. subscribed 👍
Awesome work on research and presentation! Reading Dr Bradfield's report, as you did, is well worth it. His proposals included automation of trains on the city circle! (As a bit of feedback, a suggestion is to check place name pronunciations). Not that I'm an expert. Lol
Yeah! His stuff was really interesting. I need to do one of these videos on it, I just need the motivation.
Also, yeah, I do need to learn the pronounciations, it's just I don't know anyone from those areas, and I'm not from Sydney.
@CityConnectionsMedia I'm happy to help with that! FYI I know Sharath and am "B Roll" for Paul Thomas from Transport vlog.
A similar apocalyptic film set in modern day Australia is the remake of Nevil Shute's "On The Beach", which features a lot of Melbourne city and shows some trains running on steam after civilization ends. It's got Bryan Brown being very … Bryan Brown, but you know what you get.
The original is better, especially Ava Gardener's comment that Melbourne was the perfect place to film a movie about the end of the world.
@@metricstormtrooper I hear that all the time. But the original is unwatchable now, sorry. The "new" one is nowhere near perfect - you're just getting a 2-part telemovie - but it really needed to be remade. It's impossible to watch the clunky black-and-white low-budget (even for the time) movie anymore, except specifically for the acting, but if you're there for the story - not just to watch some classic actors in Australia - we need better. It would be nice for this to get an A-grade Hollywood budget for the first time.
I still don't get why the Rushcutters Bay stop was cut, and I have been thinking they should build it now - the line is on a straight level section of viaduct there so retrofitting a station whilst maintaining full operation of the line seems and it wouldn't break the bank.
@@kyletopfer7818 seems like it was just cost tbh.
Building it now would be cool, if anything just to have an elevated station in Sydney. I just don't know if the viaduct was designed with adding one in future in mind.
@@CityConnectionsMedia at some Point when the infrastructure ages it is going to need to be replaced or remediated, perhaps then is the time. It would relieve that part of the bus corridor and the local road I'm sure, there are a number of Apartments and medium-density there and for them heading up to Kings Cross or Edgecliff is a bit awkward with the Hills and busy roads. Plus the ESR could use more passengers, I think you showed a table in your T5 Video that the ESR only has a peak loading of 89% whereas most of the other busy lines are 110% or more.
The Eastern Suburbs line should haven been extended to Kensington , or at least Randwick , instead of Bondi beach… but too many NIMBY’s at Bondi Beach as well…
Well done.
The film grain thing was famous for my parents' generation who always told me to avoid Fuji brand film which had the cold green look, and use Kodak brand film if you want the warmer "natural" look, but as a kid I disagreed and thought it was a personal preference.
Since when has the airline or East Hills line been connected to the Eastern Suburbs
hey man. Video looks great but it is so long, you should add sections to the video as I'd love to watch it and skim through but don't have so much time. Thanks!
Can do! I was considering breaking this one into chapters like I did the metro video, but I assumed not many people used them so I didn't bother. Next big video I'll break it up into chapters again.
Most of it boiled down to cost and while most of those lines seemed good they were just not viable on cost
And infamously what?
51:50 I dunno where these numbers are coming from, I have the following from August 2019 before Covid:
*10 Bondi Junction Station 730550*
*13 Martin Place Station 532940*
*18 Kings Cross Station 431360*
*36 Edgecliff Station 249190*
Edgecliff has never been anywhere near third place. Have you done something funny with the data where you have discounted all stations which have multiple lines or something?
To be honest, I just asked Sharath (Building Beautifully) since he ran the numbers for his Hunter Line video. TFNSW stopped updating the reports, and I didn't bother to compile the data myself, so I didn't fully check for myself, which I probably should have.
@@CityConnectionsMedia it would have been fair enough to have only included non-interchange Stations but if that is the case but definitely need to Special! I find it Strange the ESR doesnt have any plans for extension either to the South or the East, considering it has the most spare capacity of any inner-city line right now, and there are so many extremely busy bus corridors it could relieve; plus any LR extension to Bondi Beach will be extremely difficult and slow with the gradients and even then may struggle to have enough capacity for that corridor.
@@kyletopfer7818 Yeah. Tbh I think the main reason they're not considering any extensions is the NIMBYism of the people there, and the previous governments focus on the Metro. Truthfully them not looking into it is a missed oppurtunity imo.
Government should just been like. Oh yeah we're building it, tough shit, if you don't like it MOVE!!!. Just blame the rich. it's their fault
Help I am in the video
Love the detail & you obviously have done your research. Well done. Please work on your delivery. The staccato cadence which builds pace like a runaway steam train is off putting. Oh ditch the Sandgroper pronunciation. TAM A RAM AH not Tarmarama. CUJI not Coo geeee. Great work though.
Why do you pronounce Coogee wrong?
I'm not from Sydney :(
@@CityConnectionsMedia In that case, why should we believe anything you say about Sydney? You can't say you've done lots of detailed research and then say you can't be bothered getting derails right.
Love the thoroughness of your videos, keep it up. But I would just check your views on nimby’s in Bondi. Quite a few years after this plan to Bondi , the Cronulla riots were occurring as a direct result of having a train line connected directly to western suburbs to an entire community with very different belief systems. Not condoning the riots but it would be poor scholarship to ignore its impacts, what communities were feeling about these culture clashes and how they eventually exploded in Cronulla, we can assume the same would have happened with the Bondi connection. These fears were real by communities, and whilst the riots were most definitely racist, the many social issues leading up to that horrible explosion were not
They can't be related? The line was canned around 2000-2001, while the cronulla riots happened in 2005?
@@CityConnectionsMedia not casual, but correlated. Around this similar time there were many issues going on with assimilation, in particular with Muslim communities who had fled war torn countries with very different views on female rights and equality- the explosion of Cronulla was directly related to this, and correlates to the nimbyism of Bondi… not saying right or wrong, but reflecting on many of the undertones felt in many beach communities at that time
If you let poor people in to where the rich people play, there will be riots?
@@jack2453 socio-economics was never the issue, the Cronulla riots started from a cultural clash between men from Islamist countries and Australia’s liberalist men and women at the beach (btw which was only 30 years old during this time). The secular Left made it so painful to speak openly about the threat of political Islam and any religious zealotry that this bubbled up at Cronulla but was felt across many cities at that time. Calling out and combating the ideology of Islamism that is oppressing hundreds of millions of women under gender apartheid is the only way that non-Muslims can help those liberal Muslims who wish to reform their faith from within. There was much nimmyism originating from this place of change, and much more of it is evident today
@@Atowns Fail to see how limiting poor people's access to beaches solves any of this.
First
Second
I'm sure that your video of the ESR had some interesting facts but I found your delivery very difficult to understand because you speak too quickly and in a staccato way. I had to turn it off after one minute. Please slow down so people can follow you
I'll have to keep that in mind. I know my voice/way of speaking can be a bit offputting for people, and it's something I need to improve, it just takes time :/
Please get your Sydney pronunciation right it is so quaint to hear millennial using west Australian pronunciations
Agree, I laughed when hearing 'Wynyard', 'Coogee' and 'Devonshire' in particular. Definitely not a native Sydneysider. Apart from that a great job of narration though.
1:04:55 I told him! Haha 😂
@@DavidGiggnot wrong
i left at Winn-yard
@paulramon3353 😂🎉