About the SideTracked Series
SideTracked Caches are intended to provide quick park and grabs at or around train stations. SideTracked started at Evesham station on August 10th 2007, placed by schnarff & bikermel76. It took a while to get started, but is now spreading across the world! You can find out more at the SideTracked website.
Campsie Station
Line: T3 - Bankstown Line
Opened: 1 February 1895
Campsie is located on the Sydenham to Bankstown Railway which was opened as far as Belmore on 1 February 1895. The line had its origins in Railway Commissioner Goodchap’s 1882 recommendation that an additional line was needed between Newtown and Liverpool to relieve traffic on the southern Line and to encourage agriculture and suburban settlement. Lobbying by local interest groups and land speculators achieved Parliamentary approval by 1890 and construction commenced in 1892.
The most important stations on the line, Belmore, Canterbury and Marrickville, were built with impressive near-identical brick buildings, the other intermediate stations (Dulwich Hill and Hurlstone Park) receiving more modest timber buildings (later replaced), possibly reflecting economies of the depression of the 1890s. The depression suppressed the profitability of the line and the extension to Liverpool did not proceed. However, suburban development followed in the early twentieth century, particularly during the interwar period when many War Service homes were built west of Canterbury. The line was extended to Bankstown in 1909 (and then to Regents Park in 1928, making it part of a loop line through Lidcombe), its justification by then being the servicing of suburban development.
The station was opened in 1895 with a timber waiting shed on an island platform with the Down line on its south side and the Up line to the north in the present position of the Goods Line. A new booking office was constructed in 1905 and the platform extended in 1906.
The present station layout and station buildings date from 1915 and were constructed for the opening of the Goods Lines in 1916. The new layout featured an overhead timber booking office on a steel girder footbridge with stairs to the platform, a new brick station building on the existing island platform, and a new side (Down) platform to the south with a brick station building. The new buildings replaced all previous platform structures. The brick and stone retaining wall on the south was also constructed at this time to accommodate the new Down platform. A new jack-arch overbridge also replaced a previous timber bridge to carry Beamish Street across the four railway lines.
A northern side platform was also constructed in 1916 for the Goods line and was used by railway employees so that they could travel to and from the Enfield/ Chullora workshops area. However, the existing concrete platform and stairs date from c1950.
An overhead parcels office was constructed c1950 on the footbridge. The overhead booking office was demolished c2000 and replaced with a new structure.
NSW Railway Reports during the 1930s show that Campsie Railway Station had the largest ticket sales along the Bankstown line and still today remains one of the busiest stations on the line.
Information sourced from NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
The Future
This station, and those along the Sydenham to Bankstown line, will be converted from heavy rail into a metro style service called The South West Metro project with work due to begin in 2018. I encourage you, along with your log, to take as many photos of the station and its surrounds and add them to the gallery to help keep a pictorial journal of the changes that will be happening in the not too distant future.
Did you know that NSW has a geocaching association? Geocaching NSW aims to enhance and improve the activity of geocaching and holds regular events where geocachers meet to enjoy their common interests. Visit the association website here.