Today in Transportation History – March 8, 1998: A New Railway Station for Sydney

Olympic Park railway station made its formal debut at Sydney Olympic Park, a suburb of Sydney in Australia’s state of New South Wales (NSW). Those taking part in the opening ceremony for the station included Bob Carr, premier of NSW.

The station was built as part of the Olympic Park railway line, which also began operations on the same day and traverses a route similar to the Main Western Railway’s branch line that had been serving the area since 1911. Both the new railway line and station were designed to accommodate enormous crowds traveling to and from Sydney Olympic Park for the 2000 Summer Olympics, which marked only the second time that those summer games were held in Australia as well as the entire Southern Hemisphere.

Olympic Park railway station was designed by the multidisciplinary architecture company Hassell and constructed on a single-track balloon loop spur line by Leighton (now CPB) Contractors. The facility’s features include two tracks and four platforms for trains. The Olympic Park railway station’s design has been widely praised; in 1998, for example, the facility was honored with the BHP Colorbond Award for innovative use of steel architecture. That same year, the station was awarded the Sir John Sulman Medal from the NSW chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Long after the 2000 Summer Olympic came to an end, the station remains in use for train passengers attending various sports and cultural events at Sydney Olympic Park.