Flinders

Flinders

Shot from Yarra River, I had my tripod at the time fortunately. I used the shoot and zoom technique to create the bizarre light trails. Flinders is the main train station in Melbourne with all the trains passing Flinders.


It is on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets next to the Yarra River in the heart of the city, stretching from Swanston Street to Queen Street and covering two city blocks. Each weekday, approximately 105,000 commuters and 1,500 trains pass through it.

The original analogue clocks were replaced for a short time with digital ones, but due to a public outcry analogue ones were quickly returned. Plans in the 1970s to demolish the station and replace it with an office building were soon dismissed.

• The main steps are embedded with electrical circuits to keep them dry, fitted in June 1985.
• Platform No. 1, where Epping & Hurstbridge line trains depart, is the longest railway platform in Australia, and the fourth longest in the world, at 708 metres long.
• The building contains a ballroom (not in use), and a creche was inside the main dome when the station's offices were still in use. It included an open-air playground on an adjoining roof.
• One of the original platform verandahs from the Melbourne Terminus building was dismantled and re-erected at Hawthorn station, in the inner-eastern suburbs.
• It is rumoured that the original plans of Flinders Street Station were designed for the central station of Mumbai (then Bombay), India, but were mixed up in the London office and sent to Australia instead. This perhaps explains the unusual (for Australia) arches and alcoves that feature in the Banana Alley section, which would have been intended for street vendors. Of course, this means that the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai should have been built at Flinders Street!

(courtesy wikipedia.com)