Timetable Tuesday- 1990 Central Coast Line

The counterpart to the 1990 'Newcastle Area' timetable discussed last Tuesday was the 'Central Coast Line' timetable. This timetable combined Northern Line suburban services with services up the Central Coast through to Newcastle, but excluded "local services' between newcastle and Fassifern (and the Toronto branch line). Therefore it carried the note that it didn't show all services between Fassifern and Newcastle)

The basic Central Coast portion of the timetable consisted of hourly 'fast' services between Newcastle and Sydney, with an additional slower hourly 'all stations' service. The express service overtook the preceding all stations service at Gosford, with with a 11 minute (down trains) or a  17 minute (up trains) pause of the slow service at Gosford to allow the pass to occur. This was supplemented by a few weekday peak hour Gosford, Morisset and Wyong starters. Only one morning peak service from Gosford operated via the North Shore, all others operated via Strathfield and terminated at Sydney Terminal. On weekends, the slow interurbans served the stations between Cowan and Berowra. Also Interurbans stopped at Eastwood rather than Epping.

So essentially all stations on the Central Coast line received at least an hourly service on all days. This is a more favourable service compared with todays weekend timetable north of Wyong.

Weekday example:

Weekend example:

The suburban portion detailed services between Hornsby and Central via Strathfield The present 'Northern Line'.  Suburbans generally started at Hornsby with about a 15 minute frequency in peak hours consisting of a mixture of all stations and limited stoppers, and a half hourly frequency off peak and weekends. A mixed bag of mainly peak hour additional services started or terminated at Epping. Suburbans between Berowra and Hornsby operated via the North Shore, and were shown in the timetable with the annotation 'via North Shore'.