I worked for FailCorpse for 31 years and I've been through all the tunnels except the one heading north from Nth Sydney. I walked through one between Central and Redfern and on the way back, I saw a tunnel branching off towards Surry Hills. Didn't see it on the way in because I was facing the wrong way and it's dark down there. Anyway, in all my years at FailCorpse, I've never met another person who's seen that branch tunnel or even knows it exists. I didn't go into it because I was alone. Not that I'm scared of the dark but going down a tunnel that no-one else knows about is just too risky when no-one knew I was in there. If you tripped and broke your leg, you'd die in there and they'd never find your body. I never got a chance to go back there with another person and now the entrance has been filled in. There is another way in but you'd need ropes and grappling hooks.
You worked for a company for 31 years only to call it by a name you wouldn't name yourself? No love lost there. But good observation tho' and it would be a great idea to have a group conduct walking tours for Sydneysiders or interested folks to appreciated Sydney's rail history.
there were alot of overlapping tunnels burred out in the late 60's-early 70's that were just that, tunnels that had high hopes, but never actually connected anywhere as the underground network was build bottom to top so changes like this could be made without affecting the rest of the network if they never eventuated.
It’s wide open to the air the “tunnel”. Like most Sydney railway tunnels it was constructed as cut and cover and in that case at Redfern was never really fully covered. The Nth Sydney tunnel is just a long swing rise over the up to a dead end.
Very interesting video. I was especially interested in the Wynyard platforms 1 & 2. I remember them well being used by trams. I remember, between the tram and train platforms was a wooden backyard type fence, making it easy to see across to the other platforms. Also, on the north eastern side of the Harbour Bridge opposite Milsons Point train station, they had Milsons Point tram station. It was built identical to the train station, though there was no ticket area, as all fares were paid on the trams. Another point of interest was there were plans at one time to use the spare St James station platforms for eastern suburbs trams, which were to go underground to Darlinghurst, then continue underground and coming up into Anzac Parade joining with the existing tram lines there at the time out to the eastern suburbs. This would have occurred if the State Government, closing the tram system had been voted out. Of course, later, they thought it was to be used by trains to Bondi Junction, but when finally completed, the line went through Martin Place instead. From what I know, there are many incomplete tunnels under Sydney still waiting for the day where they may be used.
Thanks. Always interesting to know the history of Sydney's trains. I know that they originally had plans for a branch line from North Sydney to the Northern beaches.
I think that you will find that the the train station was at lavender bay where the starling yards are now, infact the platforms are still there. When they opened the harbour bridge that portion of the line was closed. Also they rebuilt St lenords station in the 1990 's
The Original milsons point station was just to the east of the Main pillar of the Harbour Bridge, but was removed for construction, the line was truncated at the final Milsons pt station, which remains in great degraded state. Some of the remnants of the approaches to the station remain (albeit obscured!). Platforms 26-27 were suppose to be 24-25 but as were not used lost priority, and, were used as record storage until around 2010, I believe still in use as storage. Hence the button in the elevator, AND, the stairs that go from concourse to 24-25 have a flat section in the middle, that is part of the station platforms 26-27!. There was 3 versions of eastern suburbs line before the final one was approved!, Uproar of residents blocked the finishing of Woollahra station!, the footings and platform facings were finished, the infill was not started!.
box hill station in victoria and st Lenards station in nsw share similar reasons for having abandoned platforms and track space. for those who pass through boxhill there was if my memory serves me correctly originally a plan for a doncaster spur off the belgrave lilydale line that would spur off from boxhill station but sadly it never happened. though with doncaster desparately needing a rail link, there may oneday in the future be a trains leaving from platform 1
I didn't see the 2 secret platforms at Town Hall Station, they are in between 1,2 & 5.6. Have a look at the distance between the platforms. How do I know, I've been there. Looks like it's fresh out of Harry Potter. I heard they used to us it for paper storage, had to be removed because of the fire risk.
Not quite. The original alignment was to follow Oxford St.. the stub tunnels end under Hyde Park. However, Busby's Bore runs the length of Oxford St all the way from Centennial Park, past Taylors Square and is still there ;)
The story is the good residents of Woollahra didn,t want the plebs getting off the station so put a stop to it. I believe there's also a ghost station before green square on the airport line.
No, they have nothing to do with the railway and as far as I know were built for the pool. In fact the original Milsons Point Station never went as far as the olympic pool, it was situated further back, more or less on the site of where Luna Park is now. Where the pool is was mostly taken up by large fabrication workshops for the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Look at this photo and you'll see what I'm talking about - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milsons_Point_railway_station#/media/File:Sydney_Harbour_Bridge_under_construction_North_Shore_aerial.jpg
The Northern Beaches Line would have crossed the Harbour Bridge on the Eastern 2 lanes and then entered North Sydney Station (hence why it has 4 platforms) before continuing in a tunnel to the Northern Beaches. Though probably not Manly itself.
Nice vid. Tx. What was the route for Platforms 26 & 27 at Central? I've searched in vain for some clarification about this. I wonder if the new platforms at Central for the Metro extension will get the designation 26 & 27? I thought you would have also shown the unused/partially built platforms at Erskineville, St.Peters and Redfern. Is that in part 2?
Most likely so, they are on top of platforms 24 and 25. The reason the Airport line did not use them is because they thought the trains would be too heavy, and could collapse onto 24 and 25. The metro uses much lighter trains though, so it would make sense.
Platforms 26 and 27 were going to be for a line to the airport but were not used to save money using existing tracks. Also the original plan was a separate train to the airport only - a shuttle from Central with no connection to the existing system - but successive governments changed the plans. There was also a plan to use them for the High Speed Train to Melbourne but that also fell through. There is no problem with them holding the weight of heavy trains. Also they will not be used for the Metro Extension. The Metro Extension will use new platforms built underneath platforms 14 and 15. Platforms 14 and 15 will be removed, as will platform 13. They will probably be numbered 14 and 15. If you wander across to platforms 14 and 15 you will see that work has already commenced and the track has been removed from platform 15.
cool_person 234 I had filmed it and was in the process of editing. However, I realised that I left out Erskineville/St Peters and am overseas until January 2018. So part 2 might not get done until next year, unfortunately.
Macbrand The original station location is actually where the current station is located. A temporary station was created just South of the Pacific Highway (the location you refer to) and used between 1989 and 2000 while the current station was built.
You are a bit misinformed. The extra platforms were built at central. It is in perfect codition preserved . In fact its completed like the ones at st James. Platform 1 and 2 at Wynyard went North. It went over the harbour bridge. You can see the ends of these tunnels in the base of the pylon,if you walk through the pylon of the Harbour Bridge and head on to walk across the bridge from the rocks. there was also a tram platform there.
Yes. 26/27 were built above 24/25 to save money long term, should they ever be required in future, but in 40 years it hasn't happened so far and is unlikely to ever be used. Metro stage two it's getting it's own platforms elsewhere and the Airport line was integrated with the city circle instead of using 26/27 to terminate as proposed.
I'm just sticking to the built and then abandoned passenger railway lines. There is a whole lot of planned railways or abandoned freight lines (such as the Northern Beaches Line you mentioned or the Inner West Light Rail), but just the abandoned passenger rail lines is enough for a planned 3 videos.
The built parts were at North Sydney, Milson's Point, and Wynyard. This video includes the Wynyard portion as it's the most interesting (in my opinion).
Bambul Shakibaei And don't forget that there were also Platforms 3 and 4 at Milson's Point, on the Eastern side of the Harbour Bridge where the Northern toll booths for the Cahill Expressway were. While they were only ever used as tram stops, they were originally designed and built as heavy rail platforms. The track was raised on ramps to bring the trams up to the platform level. Great video.
Viewers of this video might be interested in this 2011 plan to terminate trains on the previous platforms 1 & 2 at Wynyard Station to increase capacity on the North Shore line. “Central city railway capacity - making better use of existing infrastructure” atrf.info/papers/2011/2011_Norley.pdf It won’t happen now because the new Metro line will create capacity after ~2024
Things that should have been, but never were. Mainly due to successive state governments either crying poor or corruptly selling out to private interests.
Jeff NME Or in the case of St James and Central proposed lines off those platforms. We had WWII. Then the states got less funding because...we started foriegn aid.
+Ozdave McGee ...and the states ceded income tax collection to the federal government to help pay for WW2. If you look at large public infrastructure projects after the war, there really is not much of the same scale, until public/private partnerships (PPP) came along in the 1990's.
Except under PPP we get 2 lanes first off then a 40km per hour parking lot as widened to 3 lanes on the M4. Whilst projests like widening the hume highway to 3 lanes in the 60's. Im' just not feeling the "partnership" in PPP...just the feeling of being bent over, a need for hemorrhoide cream, noone offering any lube or even thanx for bending over
The only really major NSW railway project post-WW2 was the Eastern Suburbs line, which was started in 1947 (McGirr, Labor) and truncated by the Liberals (Askin, in 1967) to only ever go as far as Bondi Junction. Originally intended to go to Coogee, I personally could imagine that it might have eventually been extended to Kingsford Smith Airport, if the Liberals hadn't meddled and only given the gift of rail to the silvertails in the eastern suburbs.
I'm sure its the same in every state. Heres an idea. What if we put all rail out of syndey from parramatta in underground. What a freeway you could lay aling that corridor to redfern
Your video consists of what are called *Pieces-To-Camera.* I would make one suggestion. Use a digital voice recorder to pick up the presenter's voice better. Camera microphones tend to fall short of the mark when picking up the sound of the presenter's speech in "location" shots, even at noisy locations such as railway stations. Digital Voice Recorders record your voice to a WAV. file. All you need to do as you shoot each sequence is give a loud sound(like a hand-clap) that the camera's and the DVR's microphone will pick up together, and that hand-clap is then used to synchronise the DVR's recording with that picked up by the camera microphones.
roses are red violets are blue I've been to central and so have you... rose are black violets are yellow and red I've been to all those stations and so have u
The unused platforms at Central Station are at the Eastern, right alongside Chalmers St. The new metro line will have its platforms under the currently closed platforms 13/14/15. Its currently under construction and you can see it if you stand on platform 16 looking West.
This guy is my teacher at rose bay secondry colledge
Toby Smith his lecture must be fun
I remember the tram terminal at Wynyard station. I used it many times. I think that it closed in 1959.
Great video. Thanks for venturing into these little seen parts of Sydney's rail history
We need to see more videos on Australian underground railways.
I worked for FailCorpse for 31 years and I've been through all the tunnels except the one heading north from Nth Sydney. I walked through one between Central and Redfern and on the way back, I saw a tunnel branching off towards Surry Hills. Didn't see it on the way in because I was facing the wrong way and it's dark down there. Anyway, in all my years at FailCorpse, I've never met another person who's seen that branch tunnel or even knows it exists. I didn't go into it because I was alone. Not that I'm scared of the dark but going down a tunnel that no-one else knows about is just too risky when no-one knew I was in there. If you tripped and broke your leg, you'd die in there and they'd never find your body. I never got a chance to go back there with another person and now the entrance has been filled in. There is another way in but you'd need ropes and grappling hooks.
You worked for a company for 31 years only to call it by a name you wouldn't name yourself? No love lost there. But good observation tho' and it would be a great idea to have a group conduct walking tours for Sydneysiders or interested folks to appreciated Sydney's rail history.
One of the cross-over tunnels, there are several down there!, unlikely filled in, likely bricked over!
there were alot of overlapping tunnels burred out in the late 60's-early 70's that were just that, tunnels that had high hopes, but never actually connected anywhere as the underground network was build bottom to top so changes like this could be made without affecting the rest of the network if they never eventuated.
Sydney’s rail tunnels don’t have emergency exits or ventilation shafts. How could you possibly enter the tunnel any other way?
It’s wide open to the air the “tunnel”. Like most Sydney railway tunnels it was constructed as cut and cover and in that case at Redfern was never really fully covered.
The Nth Sydney tunnel is just a long swing rise over the up to a dead end.
old p spot, portal, jumpspot, layup
:)) sydney history
Thank you for this great tour clip!
So informative. Thanks for sharing!
So interesting! I’ve always wondered about these idiosyncrasies of the railway system. Thanks for explaining how they got there.
really cool video. i love history. thanks for creating.
Nice video! Very informative - and learnt a few interesting facts
Great video mate!
Very interesting video. I was especially interested in the Wynyard platforms 1 & 2. I remember them well being used by trams. I remember, between the tram and train platforms was a wooden backyard type fence, making it easy to see across to the other platforms. Also, on the north eastern side of the Harbour Bridge opposite Milsons Point train station, they had Milsons Point tram station. It was built identical to the train station, though there was no ticket area, as all fares were paid on the trams. Another point of interest was there were plans at one time to use the spare St James station platforms for eastern suburbs trams, which were to go underground to Darlinghurst, then continue underground and coming up into Anzac Parade joining with the existing tram lines there at the time out to the eastern suburbs. This would have occurred if the State Government, closing the tram system had been voted out. Of course, later, they thought it was to be used by trains to Bondi Junction, but when finally completed, the line went through Martin Place instead. From what I know, there are many incomplete tunnels under Sydney still waiting for the day where they may be used.
Memories, memories......
Good video mate short and sweet.and u covered all the old stations without raving on with unnecessary talk.xx
Awesome work
Thanks. Always interesting to know the history of Sydney's trains. I know that they originally had plans for a branch line from North Sydney to the Northern beaches.
Is that tunnel going from north Sydney. I think there was one at one of the stations
Knew most of this stuff but the existing milsoms point station had platform 3 and 4 for trams you can see the location today
This is very informative
good video as well
I love your videos
I think that you will find that the the train station was at lavender bay where the starling yards are now, infact the platforms are still there. When they opened the harbour bridge that portion of the line was closed.
Also they rebuilt St lenords station in the 1990 's
I'm hoping part two and three are done when you get back to Sydney Sir
Such a cool vid
The Original milsons point station was just to the east of the Main pillar of the Harbour Bridge, but was removed for construction, the line was truncated at the final Milsons pt station, which remains in great degraded state. Some of the remnants of the approaches to the station remain (albeit obscured!). Platforms 26-27 were suppose to be 24-25 but as were not used lost priority, and, were used as record storage until around 2010, I believe still in use as storage. Hence the button in the elevator, AND, the stairs that go from concourse to 24-25 have a flat section in the middle, that is part of the station platforms 26-27!. There was 3 versions of eastern suburbs line before the final one was approved!, Uproar of residents blocked the finishing of Woollahra station!, the footings and platform facings were finished, the infill was not started!.
Good narration "interesting" 👍🏼
That was cool...
Great history
box hill station in victoria and st Lenards station in nsw share similar reasons for having abandoned platforms and track space. for those who pass through boxhill there was if my memory serves me correctly originally a plan for a doncaster spur off the belgrave lilydale line that would spur off from boxhill station but sadly it never happened. though with doncaster desparately needing a rail link, there may oneday in the future be a trains leaving from platform 1
Awesome
Thank you
My Aunt said they are starting to make the tram line again at Wynyard station using where platforms 1and 2 use to be
Do you have any photos or footage of the St James middle platforms before they were filled in.
Some of the signage at the stations look a lot like the London Underground. The font and Icons are pretty close.
I didn't see the 2 secret platforms at Town Hall Station, they are in between 1,2 & 5.6. Have a look at the distance between the platforms. How do I know, I've been there. Looks like it's fresh out of Harry Potter. I heard they used to us it for paper storage, had to be removed because of the fire risk.
Good video. I have read that a tunnel that was to be part of the original alignment of the ESR actually reaches Taylor Square.
Not quite. The original alignment was to follow Oxford St.. the stub tunnels end under Hyde Park. However, Busby's Bore runs the length of Oxford St all the way from Centennial Park, past Taylors Square and is still there ;)
The story is the good residents of Woollahra didn,t want the plebs getting off the station so put a stop to it. I believe there's also a ghost station before green square on the airport line.
Nice video 😊😀
Thank you! If I had known it would turn out this popular I would have done a better job of the audio and editing!
@@BambulShakibaei, I use iMovie for editing.
Didn't know Chris Lynn was into trains hahaha
BJL6 Montages yessss I can appreciate that joke haaaa
What is the name of the background music
Are the external heritage walls of the Olympic pool (facing the ferry wharf) part of the old Milsons Point station?
Miguel Gonzalez Good question. I'm actually not sure about that one.
I think so
No, they have nothing to do with the railway and as far as I know were built for the pool. In fact the original Milsons Point Station never went as far as the olympic pool, it was situated further back, more or less on the site of where Luna Park is now. Where the pool is was mostly taken up by large fabrication workshops for the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Look at this photo and you'll see what I'm talking about - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milsons_Point_railway_station#/media/File:Sydney_Harbour_Bridge_under_construction_North_Shore_aerial.jpg
That was awesome man thankyou. Your very cute as well.
what is the music at the start
I don't know if there is a tunnel on the north shore, have not been up there in sometime. It think it was to serve Manly. Not shore about that. Thanks
The Northern Beaches Line would have crossed the Harbour Bridge on the Eastern 2 lanes and then entered North Sydney Station (hence why it has 4 platforms) before continuing in a tunnel to the Northern Beaches. Though probably not Manly itself.
nice video
although not sure what the hand waving at the end was supposed to be about
Sam H No doubt an outtake
Mark Andrew no doubt
Nice vid. Tx.
What was the route for Platforms 26 & 27 at Central? I've searched in vain for some clarification about this.
I wonder if the new platforms at Central for the Metro extension will get the designation 26 & 27?
I thought you would have also shown the unused/partially built platforms at Erskineville, St.Peters and Redfern. Is that in part 2?
Most likely so, they are on top of platforms 24 and 25. The reason the Airport line did not use them is because they thought the trains would be too heavy, and could collapse onto 24 and 25. The metro uses much lighter trains though, so it would make sense.
Platforms 26 and 27 were going to be for a line to the airport but were not used to save money using existing tracks. Also the original plan was a separate train to the airport only - a shuttle from Central with no connection to the existing system - but successive governments changed the plans. There was also a plan to use them for the High Speed Train to Melbourne but that also fell through. There is no problem with them holding the weight of heavy trains. Also they will not be used for the Metro Extension. The Metro Extension will use new platforms built underneath platforms 14 and 15. Platforms 14 and 15 will be removed, as will platform 13. They will probably be numbered 14 and 15. If you wander across to platforms 14 and 15 you will see that work has already commenced and the track has been removed from platform 15.
Part 2in the south and inner west please!
cool_person 234 I had filmed it and was in the process of editing. However, I realised that I left out Erskineville/St Peters and am overseas until January 2018. So part 2 might not get done until next year, unfortunately.
Bambul Shakibaei Oh, ok
THE EASTERN SUBBERBS LINE WAS TO TO TO RANDWICK RACECORCE AND SYDNEY AIRPORT BUT WERE NOT BUILT
St Leonard's original station and platforms 1 and 2 are 200m further down the track towards the city.
Macbrand The original station location is actually where the current station is located. A temporary station was created just South of the Pacific Highway (the location you refer to) and used between 1989 and 2000 while the current station was built.
It’s pretty sad how they did not use these train stations and I know something Wynyards ghost stations were made to go to manly
You are a bit misinformed. The extra platforms were built at central. It is in perfect codition preserved . In fact its completed like the ones at st James. Platform 1 and 2 at Wynyard went North. It went over the harbour bridge. You can see the ends of these tunnels in the base of the pylon,if you walk through the pylon of the Harbour Bridge and head on to walk across the bridge from the rocks. there was also a tram platform there.
bruz do not go up against my boy Shakdoge, he knows more about trains than he does about legal studies and economics
Ozdave McGee 4
Ozdave McGee mo
Ozdave Mc
Yes. 26/27 were built above 24/25 to save money long term, should they ever be required in future, but in 40 years it hasn't happened so far and is unlikely to ever be used.
Metro stage two it's getting it's own platforms elsewhere and the Airport line was integrated with the city circle instead of using 26/27 to terminate as proposed.
How did you get the map to zoom in
Its an image which zooms with the Ken Burns feature in iMovie on my iPad.
Wow. This is fascinating. There is so much more too. Such as the abandoned underground Northern Beaches Line.
I'm just sticking to the built and then abandoned passenger railway lines. There is a whole lot of planned railways or abandoned freight lines (such as the Northern Beaches Line you mentioned or the Inner West Light Rail), but just the abandoned passenger rail lines is enough for a planned 3 videos.
I believe the Northern Beaches Line was planned to be a passenger line. You can access part of it from North Sydney Station.
The built parts were at North Sydney, Milson's Point, and Wynyard. This video includes the Wynyard portion as it's the most interesting (in my opinion).
Bambul Shakibaei And don't forget that there were also Platforms 3 and 4 at Milson's Point, on the Eastern side of the Harbour Bridge where the Northern toll booths for the Cahill Expressway were. While they were only ever used as tram stops, they were originally designed and built as heavy rail platforms. The track was raised on ramps to bring the trams up to the platform level. Great video.
I think I read or heard information that a pair of tunnel stubs exists under North Sydney that was to be the start of a Northern Beaches line.
Makes you wonder how much extra actual infrastructure we'd have if money wasn't spent on things that don't get completed.
what do you think is hiding under there? Do you believe in supernatural beasts that live underground?
yeah man, havent you seen the tunnel?
Correction - St James was built in 1926
Anymore parts to this?
Part 2 has been filmed, but still in the editing process. Part 3 will probably come in 2018.
Bambul Shakibaei Yearly specials, lol
Viewers of this video might be interested in this 2011 plan to terminate trains on the previous platforms 1 & 2 at Wynyard Station to increase capacity on the North Shore line.
“Central city railway capacity - making better use of existing infrastructure”
atrf.info/papers/2011/2011_Norley.pdf
It won’t happen now because the new Metro line will create capacity after ~2024
Things that should have been, but never were.
Mainly due to successive state governments either crying poor or corruptly selling out to private interests.
Jeff NME Or in the case of St James and Central proposed lines off those platforms. We had WWII. Then the states got less funding because...we started foriegn aid.
+Ozdave McGee ...and the states ceded income tax collection to the federal government to help pay for WW2.
If you look at large public infrastructure projects after the war, there really is not much of the same scale, until public/private partnerships (PPP) came along in the 1990's.
Except under PPP we get 2 lanes first off then a 40km per hour parking lot as widened to 3 lanes on the M4. Whilst projests like widening the hume highway to 3 lanes in the 60's. Im' just not feeling the "partnership" in PPP...just the feeling of being bent over, a need for hemorrhoide cream, noone offering any lube or even thanx for bending over
The only really major NSW railway project post-WW2 was the Eastern Suburbs line, which was started in 1947 (McGirr, Labor) and truncated by the Liberals (Askin, in 1967) to only ever go as far as Bondi Junction.
Originally intended to go to Coogee, I personally could imagine that it might have eventually been extended to Kingsford Smith Airport, if the Liberals hadn't meddled and only given the gift of rail to the silvertails in the eastern suburbs.
I'm sure its the same in every state. Heres an idea. What if we put all rail out of syndey from parramatta in underground. What a freeway you could lay aling that corridor to redfern
the hidden past
Your video consists of what are called *Pieces-To-Camera.* I would make one suggestion. Use a digital voice recorder to pick up the presenter's voice better. Camera microphones tend to fall short of the mark when picking up the sound of the presenter's speech in "location" shots, even at noisy locations such as railway stations. Digital Voice Recorders record your voice to a WAV. file. All you need to do as you shoot each sequence is give a loud sound(like a hand-clap) that the camera's and the DVR's microphone will pick up together, and that hand-clap is then used to synchronise the DVR's recording with that picked up by the camera microphones.
Did you ever get to do Part 3 - Outer West?
@neilforbes416 you get get them at office works
@@top40researcher31 Where did this 416 come from? I never have any number after my name when posting comments or replies.
@@neilforbes416 only way to get rid of the number is to insert your user name manually but it's going to be a pain to do that
And the Chong trains are even slower
The following are a few questions to be answered here as a result 😀 👍 😄 👏 😊 😉 😀 unless a
There thinking of using the tunnels again for something...........Here’s an idea......how about trains.
Hi sir it's ben. I have a question, how the FUCK do you know all this shit.
he just does
TheDolphinDoctor It's called Research. Can be a fun thing at times
C30 Guy - Yes! Research does actually help these days!
They didn’t build the station of wollara.....because of nimbyism.
roses are red violets are blue I've been to central and so have you... rose are black violets are yellow and red I've been to all those stations and so have u
Guess they couldn’t fit it in the map so therefore they don’t built it at all.
Hi sir I'm your student
I think that the new metro will go through centrals ghost platforms
The unused platforms at Central Station are at the Eastern, right alongside Chalmers St. The new metro line will have its platforms under the currently closed platforms 13/14/15. Its currently under construction and you can see it if you stand on platform 16 looking West.
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Pp0,l
CITY RAIL IS A JOKE. SO MUCH SHOULDA COULDA WOULDA >