Melbourne's gorgeous Flinders St railway station: clocks & towers

Flinders St Station was commenced in Sep 1854, the first steam rail­way station built in Australia, part of Melbourne’s late C19th urban expans­ion. Just a collection of weather-board sheds then, the Melbourne terminus saw a single line ins­t­alled, leaving for Sand­ridge-Port Melbourne. This temporary wooden build­ing lasted until 1901.

 Edwardian baroque building all the way down Flinders St

Completed 1910

A competition by the Railway Commission called for people to design a new and improved st­ation, first pr­ize being £500. Railway work­ers JW Fawcett & HPC Ashworth won, designing the station that still impresses. The new station cost £514,000, becoming Melb­ourne’s cultural icon in 10 years: the dome, grand entrance­way, towers and selection of clocks. The architecture was influenced by Fren­ch Ren­ais­sance style and was completed in 1910, reflecting the growing im­portance of Melb­ourne as a maj­or  commer­cial-indus­t­rial city.

One of the two clock towers built in 1914

The two clock towers above its entrances were built in 1914. The clocks were manufactured by Johnson’s in Sydney, and were installed in the towers in 1914 in a major engin­eering project. The towers needed to be braced to withstand the weight of the clock mechan­isms, as were the wings connect­ing the main building to the towers. They remain thus today, 77 ms high and visible from 10 ks away. The large clocks in the towers were visible to railway workers, passengers and people in the streets below.

The Deco clock tower shafts were always very narrow and hollow. They were filled with bricks when the towers were built, but the bricks were removed in the 1920s to create space for the winding mechanism. Inside the shafts, there’s now room for passengers to climb the stairs and look out the windows high over the city. The shafts were held up by a series of wooden joists and beams, meaning that they were extremely flex­ible and able to withstand constant use.

The small clocks at its entrance, indicating next departure times for Melb­ourne's train lines, were once manually changed for each depart­ure by station attendants with a two-way radio and a long pole: 900 times every 8 hours. The actual timekeeping mech­anism was in an adjacent room, and the power from the weights was transmitted to the mechanism by a series of pulleys. The clocks were wound manually once every week, with a winding key in the basement. The clocks are comput­erised now.

9 of the 13 clocks at the station's entrance

Note the steps where people wait for friends and family

  

There are 13 clocks still displayed to this day, indicating the different train departures to each suburban train line. The wide steps underneath the clocks are used as a popular meeting place; I’ll meet you under the clocks refers to this row of clocks that line the wall above the main entrance. The steps have been so popular that they were refitted lat­er to include winter heating.

The station was built as a ter­minus for both passenger and cargo rail services, as well as a major centre for goods distribution. Located at Swanston and Flinders Sts corner and stretched al­ong the Yarra River covering two city blocks, the station looks magnific­ent in its ornate baroque style architecture. 

The station had a major upg­r­ade in the 1920s, with the addition of side wings and a pedestrian sub­way link­ing Flinders St with Swanston St.  By the mid 1920s Flind­ers St was the busiest train station in the entire world serving up to 300,000 passengers a day! It outdid Gare St Lazare Paris, Grand Central NY and Liverpool St London.

The clock tower shafts were made of sandstone, with ar­chit­ectural feat­ures in the Art Deco style including geometric shapes, che­v­rons and stylised leaves. The new pieces of architectural decoration that were added in up­grade were a] an archit­ect­ural cart­ouche featuring a stylised peacock, a sy­mbol of immortality. And b] a stylised depiction of a ship, a symbol of Melbourne’s role as a major port.

Interior spaces could be leased for facilities, from the base­ment to 4 floors up. Most of the top floor was reserved for the Vic­t­orian Rail­ways Institute which later included a lecture theatre. This was ev­ent­ually converted into a grand ballroom, po­p­ular for dances in the 50s and 60s; library; billiard room; gymnasium-boxing ring; and roof-top running track where the male employees exercised during breaks.

Foyer inside the front entrance 

with ticket booths

   

The station opened a children’s nursery in June 1933, with cot rooms, playrooms, kitchen and a rooftop play­­ground. Mothers travelling by train left their youngsters cared by qualif­ied nurses while shop­ping in the city. The nurs­ery temporarily closed in 1937 during a po­lio epid­emic and per­m­anently closed in the war in 1942. Aft­er WW2, the grand ballroom became a cultural hub, hos­t­­ing concerts, dances and gatherings. But it closed in mid-1980s and fell apart.

In 1954, to cater for the increasing traffic, as well as for the 1956 summer Olympics, the subway from the station was extended to the north side of Flinders St. In March 1966 Platform 1 was extended to 708 ms, stretching two city blocks from Swanston St, the longest platform in Australia. It is still servicing two rural lines.

It is interesting that the original indicator clocks were removed and replaced with digital displays in the 1980s, but a huge public outcry resulted in the old clocks being restored within a day! This station still boasts crowds of travellers on its stairs, concourses, underpasses and platforms.

Flinders St Station remains the symbol of Melbourne, the city having a population of 5,235,000 (2023).