Port Adelaide railway station, Adelaide
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Port Adelaide station is on the suburban rail route between Adelaide and Outer Harbor, 11.7 km (7¼ miles) from Adelaide.
Passenger trains are provided by TransAdelaide and operate a 30 minute off-peak frequency on Monday to Fridays. Peak hour services are more frequent, while evening and weekend trains depart hourly. Regular freight trains also pass through Port Adelaide station.
Port Adelaide station’s two elevated platforms are located on a viaduct which carries the railway across Commercial Road. The station is unstaffed and now has no buildings or other facilities except basic passenger shelters on each platform.
The railway tracks through Port Adelaide station are dual gauge and capable of carrying both broad gauge (1600mm) and standard gauge trains. This allows freight traffic from Dry Creek via the Rosewater loop to access industrial facilities on the LeFevre peninsula and the container terminal at Pelican Point. All TransAdelaide railcars are broad gauge, but freight trains can be either broad gauge or standard gauge, depending on their origin or destination.
Contents |
[edit] Adjacent Stations
| Preceding station (inbound) |
TransAdelaide network | Following station (outbound) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alberton | Outer Harbor Line | Ethelton | ||
[edit] History
The line from Adelaide to Port Adelaide was the first railway in South Australia and opened in 1856. However this line had been operating for 60 years before today’s Port Adelaide station came to be built.
The original line from Adelaide ran directly to Port Dock station, the site now occupied by the National Railway Museum. Various lines then continued through the Port Adelaide’s streets to the wharves and, from 1878, along St Vincent St to the seaside town of Semaphore.
Congestion at Port Dock and the delays involved in operating trains along busy streets in the centre of the Port resulted in construction of a viaduct and a new bridge across the Port River in 1916. This diverted all through trains to Semaphore and Outer Harbor via a new station named Port Adelaide – Commercial Road (which is the station in use today).
When built, Port Adelaide Commercial Road was quite a substantial building, with long platforms, an overall roof and a signal cabin. This quickly took over from Port Dock as the town’s principal railway station.
As rail traffic decreased through the 1960’s and 70’s, facilities at Commercial Road station were gradually reduced. In the early 1970’s the roof was removed, platforms shortened and the street level station buildings reconstructed. The ticket office was eventually closed in January 1979 and the station has been unstaffed since then.
With the closure of Port Dock in 1981, Commercial Road station became known simply as Port Adelaide.
[edit] Future
Port Adelaide is an area undergoing significant redevelopment, both for new housing and to capitalize on the historic wharf precinct to attract tourism. Today’s Port Adelaide station is an uninviting environment for commuters, tourists and visitors to nearby museums, and some upgrade plans might be anticipated.
However the future of the section of route over the viaduct is uncertain for two reasons:-
- All freight traffic now traveling via Glanville to the LeFevre peninsula industrial line will definitely be diverted to a new rail bridge. Construction of this bridge is scheduled to start in 2006 and will cross the Port River downsteam of the Port Adelaide harbour.
- There are intermittent proposals to upgrade the entire rail route from Adelaide to Port Adelaide and convert it to Light Rail. Nothing has been announced, but one might reasonably expect any Light Rail project to include street running through the heritage areas of central Port Adelaide.
Both of these initiatives would render the Commercial Road viaduct and today’s Port Adelaide station redundant.
[edit] References
- Rails Through Swamp and Sand – A History of the Port Adelaide Railway. M. Thompson pub. Port Dock Station Railway Museum (1988) ISBN 0-9595073-6-1
