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'.

Timetable Tuesday: 1989- Newcastle Area

In 1990, the Toronto branch line in the Newcastle area closed. The Toronto line was a single track line which branched from the Main North at Fassifern, and served the lakeside town of Toronto, with one intermediate station- Blackall's Park. Toronto station still exists, reasonably well preserved.

The October 1989 timetable is the last timetable which included this line. The running time for the branch was 6 minutes, and remarkably an approximately 20 minute frequency was maintained on the line, even on weekends. Every 2nd or so train connected with services to Newcastle or Sydney.

The timetable was also formatted in such a way that the some Toronto branch services appear in the same column as the main line service (you will see what I mean in the examples of the timetable).

This was also the last CityRail timetable to feature the Brisbane Limited and the Pacific Coast Moto-rail prior to their replacement by XPTs.

Also, Hilldale and Wirragulla stations were not served, and CityRail services ended at Muswellbrook (i.e. they didn't make it to Scone). There were the same number of weekday services past Telarah as today- 4 to Muswellbrook and 5 to Dungog. Weekend frequency was the same as today but different timings.

The frequency of services between Telarah and Newcastle was about the same as today, but in 1989 services stopped at all stations giving a half hour frequency for all intermediate stations, compared to an hourly frequency at smaller stations today with the current pattern of alternate limited stops services.

Note also that the map has a gap between Singleton and Branxton. I'm not sure what station was previously there. Belford was served for a while after 1990, but there are a couple of other possibilities: Whiitingham?, Minimbah? Warabrook and Metford hadn't opened then either- they debuted in 1995.