Sad Stories from Newcastle, NSW

Posted on September 4, 2014

Today on the train from Newcastle to Adamstown (where I live) there was a man with a bike, and a sight-impaired man with a white stick who was helped on board by the woman I have bought tickets from in the ticket collection office at Broadmeadow Station.

We were the three passengers together. And the train sped us to our destinations. The man with a bike also disembarked at Adamstown. But soon the forces that be behind the scenes (as the Battle of Newcastle rages) will rip up this train line and replace it with a bus terminal. Another hideous terminal like that outside Central Station in Sydney, a garish construction offering nothing but a flimsy roof and a scattering of fast food takeaway shops. Horrible. And this is being projected in place of Newcastle’s historic rail line.

Why, any sane person would ask. Well, as the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) has recently revealed because there is profit to be made in ripping up the rail line, destroying several highly significant rail stations, and preferably – for “them”- installing a new Coal Terminal in a nearby location. The men behind this venture do not live in Newcastle, but stand to profit from it.

To me, as a person on a train, it seems absurd to rip up the train lines and instead install a bus line and train line that will mean changing from the train to bus to “light rail”- what a bore.

I would suggest to those billionaire non-public-transport users attempting to put this into place that they try this themselves.

We do not want “light rail”. We do not want “buses from trains”.

We want a BETTER and FASTER train from Sydney to Newcastle.

It is that simple.