Inside Central Station (Australia)

Hi All,

There has been a program airing on the Australian SBS channel that is a "behind the scenes documentary" about the Railways of NSW called Inside Central Station. It has been entertaining, although some false heightened sense of drama has been added by the production crew to make it more attractive to the non rail enthusiasts.

As it has been filmed very recently between 2020 and 2021 some of the events are still fresh in our minds, like the storms or 3801s return in the latest episode.
With Central station being the center of the network, a lot of events that occur do happen to effect many different lines and a fair bit of the action does happen to take place on the Illawarra line, the line that I use almost daily (I keep expecting to see myself show up in the background).

It is a 10 part series and is available on the SBS on demand website: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/inside-central-station

No sign up fees, though I don't know if the videos are restricted to Australia only.

Regards,
Justin

Hi Justin.

Unfortunately it is only available in Australia,

Hi Mark,

Thanks for that. They are available for offline viewing (which I have downloaded), so I might put them into my Dropbox so that I can share them out.

Justin

Thanks, it will be interesting to see that.

Hi All,

Here are the episodes. At present there are only 7 episodes as it is still airing here in Australia.
I will add in the others as they become available. The episode descriptions are from the SBS website.

Inside Central Station Episode 1

Sydney Harbour Bridge Closure - Ep 1
It's New Year's Eve and on Sydney's Harbour Bridge the most ambitious ever repair of the Bridge's rail corridor has begun. A massive lightning strike takes out a signal box, bringing trains to a halt.

Inside Central Station Episode 2

Woman Faints Into Train - Ep 2
Back at Central, we meet Nasser, a customer service attendant at Central Station. Nasser is first on the scene when a woman faints onto another person standing on the platform.

Inside Central Station Episode 3

Lidcombe Self Harm - Ep 3
At Lidcombe station, a man has tragically taken his own life. Although the human tragedy is overwhelming, rail staff focus on dealing with the immediate impact on passengers and the network.

Inside Central Station Episode 4

Rain - Ep 4
Over 48 hours, the city is drenched by over 300 millimetres of rain causing chaos on the network. As rain buckets down across Sydney, staff at the Rail Operations Centre are bracing for the worst.

Inside Central Station Episode 5

Man Falls In Train - Ep 5
In this episode, we mark the anniversary of Australia's worst train disaster. In 1977, 84 people were killed when a passenger train left the tracks and crashed into an overpass at Granville.

Inside Central Station Episode 6

After Dark - Tamale - Ep 6
We go behind the scenes of the Sydney rail network at night. CSA Tamale is on night shift, looking after the platform servicing Kings Cross, Sydney' s nightclub district.

Inside Central Station Episode 7

3801 Launch - Ep 7
In this episode, we go behind the scenes of Sydney Train's ongoing battle against graffiti. Train tagging costs the network more than $35 million every year to clean off.

Inside Central Station Episode 8

Mardi Gras - Ep 8
For Bea, a transgender woman, the upcoming Mardi Gras parade will be the first time she will be marching as part of Transport for NSW Mardi Gras group. Excitement grows as the day approaches.

Inside Central Station Episode 9

T4 Line - Ep 9
It's almost Christmas, one of the busiest times of year for Sydney Trains. With over 3000 train journeys every day, staff at Central Station are working around the clock.

Inside Central Station Episode 10

W3 Restoration & St James Tunnels - Ep 10
Venture deep below one of Sydney's oldest subway stations, to reveal a secret that sheds light on the city's wartime history.


As is normal for this type of program, the episodes show events out of chronological order. The heritage train derailment in episode 4 takes place the weekend after 3801s re-launch shown in episode 7. It was to be 3801s first big in service run since restoration as the previous event was the weekend shuttles to Hurstville (as shown in my video of the event). The diesels were to haul the train part of the way out of Sydney and then they would switch over to 3801.

The only major complaint that I have out of the whole series is that in ep7 the narrator, the very talented Shane Jacobson butchers the way he says 3801. I guess that the production crew told him to do it as "Three. Eight. Oh. One", which most enthusiasts would cringe at. The correct way, as heard when everyone refers to it is "Thirty-Eight-Oh-One" or "Oh-One" for short once you have established which class of loco you are referring to. You sort of roll everything into one long word.

Enjoy,
Justin

j3801 wrote:Hi All,
...................................
The only major complaint that I have out of the whole series is that in ep7 the narrator, the very talented Shane Jacobson butchers the way he says 3801. I guess that the production crew told him to do it as "Three. Eight. Oh. One", which most enthusiasts would cringe at. The correct way, as heard when everyone refers to it is "Thirty-Eight-Oh-One" or "Oh-One" for short once you have established which class of loco you are referring to. You sort of roll everything into one long word.     Enjoy, Justin

The other thing that Shane Jacobson butchered was to refer to 3801 as 'The Three. Eight. Oh. One' - the addition of 'The' in front is an Americanism that has unfortunately carried over into Australian speech - The Yanks call anything (with a number), like ' and here comes the 45 car, in a swooping move to overtake the 28 car !'

Just wish we could dump these Americanisms out of our language for good.
Brian

Hi Brian,
British reporters seem to have fallen into the same habit!  I've often heard certain locomotives referred to as The Flying Scotsman  and The Mallard !!
It makes me cringe!

Cheers,
Ged

Hi All,

Episodes 8 and 9 are now available.

A bit of a note on episode 9:
Most of the action in this episode is on the T4 Illawarra line, which is my home line.
Weirdly, I don't remember the main event happening, though with all the goings on I may have happened on a day when I wasn't working and didn't pay attention to the transport app which shows network updates.

I do recall a similar event where the Illawarra was shut down south of Hurstville a few months ago due to a "track equipment failure" at Mortdale. Unlike the events in the episode, the one wasn't handled well at all. There was constant announcements to get on the trains and change to buses at Hurstville, however, once you got to Hurstville there weren't any buses arranged, nor would there be. There was close to 1000 people just crammed all around the station with no information being passed around. I managed to get to where the bus interchange is located at Hurstville and found that everything was a complete mess.

Station staff were trying to figure out what was going on but the 5 that I saw just gave up and decided to go back and hide in the station office (their words not mine, as I overheard them talking as they passed me). After they left, a 6th team member came back towards the station on his radio saying that they need to get the trains to come back to the station as it was overcrowded and there wasn't a replacement bus service in place and that all the other stations needed to stop making that announcement as they wouldn't be getting any buses. He passed me as he was saying this and I thought "stuff this, I'll try going back to Rockdale to get a normal bus service back to Miranda and at worse I will just walk 4km home..."

Once I got back onto the station concourse I noticed the next "Bondi Junction" service was just about to come in and terminate on Platform 2. I managed to get there just before the train came in. The announcements came over that this was a "Bondi Junction Service", so I got on. Within a minute an announcement came over that "The train on Platform 2 in now a Cronulla service, Cronulla service now on Platform 2". Needless to say I was happy! But there were so many people that missed out on the information and were wandering around like lost sheep simply because their "normal plans" stopped. Working in Retail has taught me that you need to pay attention to all the details and be ready to change your plans without a seconds notice.

Justin

Hi All,

Perhaps I should have posted this earlier but to try and help people follow along here is a network map for the Sydney Suburban Network (from the Transport Sydney Trains website). Image links to a bigger version.



Justin

Over here we have "Paddington 24/7" onChannel 5.

Quite good,but the the control office seems to have "grown like Topsy" compared with my days in Euston control.They also seem to be like a load of kids ! In one episode,they had an EMU fail just outside the station;it took them 3 hours to remove it !!!! Then an HST with loss of air;again,took them forever,yet an HST has 2 locos,how can you run out of air ?
One good thing,I saw one of my friends from many years ago driving a steam railtour headed by 60103.

Hi All,

The final episode is now available.

There was only one surprising moment from this episode for me, and that was seeing the original Tangara (T20) in the footage shown near Circular Quay.



This Tangara is a regular visitor to the Cronulla line as it is based out of Mortdale, and I have been on it many times. I usually keep and eye out for it when I am out and about as it is usually never far away, some times I think that it is chasing me with how regularly we meet.

For those who are interested the car numbers of the original Tangara are D6101, N5101, N5102, D6102. Up until a few years ago it was even more identifiable as it had 2 little raised lumps at the corners of the front roof section. The panels with these have been removed and fitted to another unit for some reason.

Unlike the following generations of trains, the Millenniums (M sets), the OSCARs (H set - OSCAR is short for Outer Suburban CARriages ) and the Waratahs (A and B Sets), the original/prototype Tangara entered service as T20 instead of T1 (a set number that I have yet to see) for some unknown reason. It has, however, always been allocated to the Mortdale service center as shown by the red set plate. Red being for Mortdale, Black is Hornsby, Blue is Flemington, Green is Eveleigh.

Regards,
Justin