Port Dock railway station was located in the commercial centre of Port Adelaide, South Australia at the corner of St Vincent Street and Lipson Street. This station was the original terminus of the railway between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, which opened in 1856.Since closure in 1981, the site of the passenger station has been redeveloped as the Port Adelaide Police Station and Magistrates' Court. The former goods yard, adjacent to Lipson Street, is now occupied by the National Railway Museum - Port Adelaide.HistoryThe station was opened with the line from Adelaide in April 1856 and for the first sixty years until 1916, it was the only railway station in town and known simply as Port Adelaide. The original station was quite an impressive structure, with a large curved roof over the platforms. Facing St Vincent Street was a two-storey stone building, which also included a tower. The two side platforms were about 120–150 metres in length each, and the platform architecture was the same as the platforms at the Bowden and Alberton stations.In February 1868 a direct line was built from Dry Creek to Port Adelaide to allow goods and minerals from the state’s mid-north and the Murray River to reach the Port directly, without needing to travel via Adelaide.In 1878 a railway was opened from Port Adelaide to Semaphore. This followed a different route to today’s line as far as Glanville. The Semaphore line emerged from the western side of Port Adelaide station, travelled down the middle of St Vincent Street and crossed the Port River via the Jervois Bridge before curving to join the current alignment of the Outer Harbor line into Glanville station. Steam trains travelled through Port Adelaide’s commercial centre at walking speed, with the locomotive crew ringing a bell. Even at that time this arrangement was unsatisfactory for both local citizens and the railway operators, and can hardly be imagined today when St Vincent Street is a semi-permanent traffic jam of heavy trucks, cars and commercial vehicles.
- Category:
- Transit stop