Salisbury railway station, Adelaide

Salisbury Interchange is a railway station and bus interchange in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia.

Salisbury Interchange is on the Gawler Central railway line, 18.6 km (11½ miles) from Adelaide station There are a large bus interchange and a park-and-ride facility alongside the station .

Salisbury is an important regional centre for shopping, recreation and government services. The headquarters of the City of Salisbury is there and other facilities within easy reach of Interchange include various government offices, a shopping centre, a TAFE college, and a cinema. With its role as a transport interchange, Salisbury is one of the busiest stations on the Adelaide suburban rail system.

Salisbury is one of the few railway stations on the Adelaide Metro network with a staffed ticket office. It has been designated a Safer Station with enhanced lighting, CCTV surveillance and security help phones provided.

It was revealed in the Sunday Mail on 16 March 2008, the several services which either terminated or commenced at Salisbury Interchage will be cut, however overall services have increased, with all services terminating at either Gawler or Gawler Central.

Rail and bus services

All rail services are provided by Adelaide Metro using diesel railcars.

Trains to and from Adelaide and Gawler operate every 15 minutes at off-peak times on Monday to Friday, and every 30 minutes during the day on Saturday and Sunday. In the evening, services run every hour.

In morning peak hours, there are several trains that run non-stop between Salisbury and Adelaide (or make only one stop, at Mawson Interchange). These are used by a significant number of city workers who either park their vehicle or transfer from buses at Salisbury Interchange.

Local buses from Salisbury Interchange, scheduled to connect with trains to and from Adelaide, use the Adelaide Metro integrated ticketing system. In mid-2008 there are 16 local bus routes providing links to many of the northern suburbs, such as Elizabeth, Golden Grove, Mawson Lakes, Para Hills, and Parafield Gardens. Up-to-date details are available from Adelaide Metro. Bus services are currently operated by SouthLink and Torrens Transit under contract to the S.A. Government’s Office of Public Transport.

Rail operations

A number of freight trains pass Salisbury. Broad gauge trains pass through the station platforms, carrying limestone from the Barossa Valley to Osborne and grain from Roseworthy to Port Adelaide for export.

Just west of the station (but not passing through the platforms) is the ARTC standard gauge main line northwards from Adelaide. This is used by regular freight trains to and from Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Darwin, and The Ghan and Indian Pacific transcontinental passenger trains.

Signalling on the broad gauge lines at Salisbury is controlled from TransAdelaide’s computerised train control centre in the Adelaide station yard.

The standard gauge line is controlled from the ARTC control centre at Mile End.

The level crossing on Park Terrace, immediately south of the station platforms was the scene of a fatal collision between the Ghan train and several cars and a bus, in October 2002. Since then, buses to and from the Interchange have been re-routed away from the level crossing and pedestrian gates have been installed, which are locked automatically by approaching trains. This is the first installation of this type of level crossing protection in South Australia.

A number of suburban trains towards Gawler are crossed onto the southbound track at Salisbury Interchange, and use the main platform (no. 2) rather than the usual northbound platform 1. This gives passengers more convenient cross-platform access to the bus stops and eliminates the need for alighting passengers to cross the rail tracks. Trains revert to their normal track on departure.

The short siding north of Salisbury was used to terminate and reverse several trains in the weekday peak-hours. As a result of timetable changes on 27 April 2008, trains no longer terminate here. It is the last remnant of the former branch line to Penfield.

History

The railway line through Salisbury was originally opened in June 1857, initially running north as far as Smithfield. The line was extended to Gawler and Kapunda in 1860 and Burra by 1870 to exploit the copper mining boom in those areas.

The line through Salisbury became the South Australian Railway’s broad gauge Main North line, used by a variety of local and country trains, and also by passengers and freight travelling long distances to Broken Hill, Alice Springs and Kalgoorlie, (although all these interstate journeys involved changing trains at break-of-gauge stations).

In 1925 a junction was installed north of Salisbury when a new line was built to Redhill, in the state’s mid-North. By 1937, this line was extended to Port Pirie and was used by the broad gauge East-West express, which connected with the Commonwealth Railways TransAustralian train to Kalgoorlie.

In 1941 a second junction was installed north of Salisbury, when a short branch line was opened to various World War II armaments factories at Penfield. During the war years this branch line was used by many passenger trains carrying workers to the munitions factories in the area. This was necessary because Salisbury was still a semi-rural community at the time and most of the workforce had to be brought in from other districts. This line terminated in a balloon loop.

A more limited peak hour service to Penfield continued after the war, serving staff at the government Weapons Research Establishment later to become the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). The remaining peak-hour trains were withdrawn from the Penfield branch in January 1991, due to low patronage and the need to fund an upgrade of the worn-out track.

The final branch line in the area was a short access line into the GMH car plant at Elizabeth, opened in 1959. This left the Gawler line around 2 km north of Salisbury station and was used mainly by freight trains, but had passenger trains at shift change-over times. The last passenger train on the GMH branch ran in August 1992, and the remaining freight traffic stopped when the Melbourne to Adelaide line was converted to standard gauge in 1995.

In March 1978 all non-metropolitan railways in South Australia were sold to the Federal government and placed under the control of the Australian National Railways Commission (later to become Australian National, AN). Railways in the metropolitan area were retained by the state-controlled State Transport Authority (STA). The lines through Salisbury and on to Gawler remained with the STA, since they were part of the suburban system. AN had responsibility for the Port Pirie line from Salisbury Junction northwards, but needed to run its trains over STA tracks between Adelaide and Salisbury.

In 1982, AN converted the broad gauge Salisbury Junction to Port Pirie line to standard gauge (and diverted it to Crystal Brook at the northern end). A new standard gauge line was built through the Salisbury station area, completely separate from the broad gauge tracks and passing west of the Gawler line platforms. This was a single line, with no platform or any other infrastructure provided at Salisbury and trains usually passed non-stop at high speed. This is still the situation at Salisbury today, although ownership and responsibilities have now transferred from AN to ARTC and from the STA to TransAdelaide.

In 1985 Salisbury station was rebuilt as a major STA bus/rail interchange. This was the second purpose-built transport interchange in the Adelaide metropolitan area (the first had been at Noarlunga Centre). The historic 1857 station building on the down platform was demolished when the standard gauge line opened. The new Interchange opened in December 1985.

See also

• List of Adelaide railway stations
• List of suburban and commuter rail systems
• Railways in Adelaide
• Rail transport in South Australia

External links

• South Australia Central
• Office of Public Transport
• Adelaide Metro