Gawler Central railway station is the terminus railway station on the Gawler railway line which is located in the South Australian town of Gawler. It is located 42.2km by railway from the Adelaide Railway Station. The station was opened in May 1911 and was originally named Willaston. It was renamed North Gawler in September 1911. On 12 February 1984 the name was changed to Gawler Central.
In the early 1920s the South Australian Railways decided to extend suburban service to all stations with a 25 mile radius (by rail) of the Adelaide Railway Station. The only exception was North Gawler which is located (by the old measure) 26 miles, 14 chains from Adelaide. North Gawler (now called Gawler Central) has been the terminus of most North Line suburban services ever since.
While Gawler Central is the terminus of the metropolitan passenger service, the track continues east then north into the Barossa Valley. It is used daily by a Penrice Soda Products train carrying limestone from their quarry at Penrice (near Angaston) to their soda ash factory at Osborne.
Gawler Central is also unique as the most northernmost railway station on the Adelaide Metro Rail System, however this will change if plans to extend passenger services north to Lyndoch, Nurioopta and Angaston in the Barossa Valley reach fruition.
Famous quotes containing the words central, railway and/or station:
“The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)