Built: 1946-1965
Architect: Kennedy, Furner, Irvine-Smith & Joubert
Aerial photo with legend. (Source: SARN, 1959)
Earlier history
Park Station (First)
Park Station (Second)
Park Station Third
"Prior to 1946 alternative station sites were investigated by both local and overseas experts but it was clear that by far the most satisfactory solution was to take over the old Wanderers Ground situated immediately north of the station and to build facilities on a bold scale over the increased area thus made available."³
By the late 1940s Johannesburg’s railway station had already been rebuilt twice on the exact same site in less than seventy years.Work had begun in 1946 with the goal of turning Park Station into one of the most modern terminals in the world. When finished, the complex would rival New York’s Grand Central in scale. By 1959 it was handling 450 passenger trains, 178 goods trains and roughly 180,000 travellers per day. The final construction cost was expected to reach almost £10.4 million.
The biggest engineering headache was that everything had to be rebuilt 4m lower than before. Lowering the platforms allowed pedestrians to reach the station at street level and let new road bridges cross the tracks without ramps.
The project was split into four stages:
- Stage I: New tracks and platforms were laid on the old Wanderers Ground to the north, the whole station was physically shifted, and the first services ran on 9 September 1951.
- Stage II: Demolished the old southern platforms while traffic continued on the northern side.
- Stage III: Building the concrete deck slab right over the new lowered suburban platforms (the “eight-acre” slab that later became the floor for the passenger concourses and allowed road-level access). (1959). Ramps, forecourt.
- Stage IV: The final main-line concourses was expected around 1962.
From a nearby skyscraper in 1959 the site already looked like a small city under construction. A new Communications Block (finished early 1956) straddled the northern roadway. Next to it stood the eight-storey Tippett Building (named after the first Chief Civil Engineer and completed in 1954), whose open ground floor gave direct platform access. The Johan Rissik Bridge – the longest and grandest of seven new bridges, costing £275,000 and stretching 1,000 feet - arched over the western entrance. Seven bridges in total had been built, widened or lowered at a cost approaching £1 million so that road traffic now flowed smoothly at street level above the railways.
The most visible progress in 1959 was the two suburban concourses rising side by side. The European suburban concourse already had 50-foot columns in place and its dramatic wall of windows running the full length; six reversible escalators (each four feet wide and capable of moving 8,000 people an hour) moved passengers down to the platforms 19 feet below. Parallel to it, the reinforced-concrete non-European suburban concourse was in an advanced stage, featuring innovative 75-foot pre-stressed beams weighing nine tons each. Both concourses were promised identical modern amenities - shops, waiting rooms, restaurants, booking offices, post offices and indirect lighting - with a shared main-line reservation hall at their junction.
Above the tracks, engineers had already poured a 75-foot-wide concrete deck slab. Three motor-car ramps would soon let drivers drive down to the three main-line island platforms, with matching exit ramps on the western side. Further parking decks were planned: 240 car spaces on the widened main-line platforms (tripling the old capacity), 110 cars beside the Rissik Bridge forecourt, and additional spaces next to the non-European concourse. An Air Terminal rotunda and thirteen-storey office block were also starting to rise on the deck between Rissik and Harrison Streets, with the first stage already funded.
Supporting infrastructure included a new eight-storey catering depot (£330,000) west of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, while separate rest rooms for dining-car staff had just been finished. Nearly 3,000 feet of subways and ramps connected platforms to parcels and baggage offices, and a new 2,300-foot postal tunnel system cut mail delivery from the G.P.O. from over an hour to just 15 minutes. Signalling cost £280,000, with a state-of-the-art signal cabin on the eastern side that had controlled three different track layouts over five years without a single day’s closure.
When the final main-line concourses, full decking and Air Terminal were completed (expected around 1965), Johannesburg would have a fully separated, street-level, dual-purpose terminal that treated suburban commuters and long-distance travellers with equal care, while keeping the city’s road traffic flowing overhead.
Individual buildings
Sources
- South African Railway News. May 1959.
- Johannesburg Style. 1993. Chipkin, C.
- The Johannesburg Railway Station. 1975. Klintworth, P.W.J.
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