Where is St Leonards station’s mystery platform?

If you frequent St Leonards train station, you’ve probably grown so accustomed to platforms two and three — heading to Hornsby or the city — that you’ve never stopped to crunch those numbers and ask: where’s platform one?

It all goes back to the station's early days, where it played a much more central role on the North Shore line, once in fact acting as it’s terminus.

Back then, plans were put forward by John Bradfield — the brains behind Sydney’s modern train system, among other significant projects — to construct a line from St Leonards to Eastwood. Unfortunately, the late 1920s wasn't the best time to start major construction projects, and the railway never came to fruition.

When the Epping line did materialise, it was in 2009, and St Leonards station had been passed up for Chatswood as the line's starting point.

You can still see exactly where the platform was meant to be, if you just look through the fence on platform two. Besides old newspaper clippings, archival records, and copies of railway digest, this little stretch of dry grass and gravel is the only memory of the ill-fated platform one. 

Image Source: National Library of Australia