Wollongong suburbia shaped by a rail line that disappeared almost a century ago

We're talking about the line that carried coal from the mines in the escarpment down to Belmore Basin.

There is the tiniest remnant of it in Osbourne Park on Cliff Road but the rest of it is long gone.

But it has still affected the layout of the city to this day.

The mystery of the train line was sparked earlier this week by a item in the Mercury's regular Pg 2 history piece.

Monday's look into the past went to 1947 and Wollongong Council's plans to demolish a traffic bridge in Church Street.

Which raised the obvious question - there was a traffic bridge in Church Street?

Sadly the story didn't mention where it was - as is the case with most news stories, the readers of the day would have known exactly what bridge the council planned to demolish.

But a helpful call from a Mercury reader put us on the right track, so to speak.

That then sent us to look at old aerial photos of the city - as far back as 1938 - which clearly show the rail route.

It ran along the main rail line, until a spur bent eastward near where the Throsby Drive overpass is now.

From there it curled around the southern edge of what is now Collegians and then travelled to the harbour in between Campbell and Smith streets.

That 1938 image also shows what appear to be coal cars taking the curve behind the modern-day Collegians.

Looking at the aerial images taken through the 20^th century, the location of the Church Street bridge was right where the entrance to the Builders car park is - the rail line travelled straight through the southern side of the car park.

Over the years, suburbia grew with houses appearing along Smith and Campbell streets, but the rail corridor was left untouched.

It wasn't until the 1970s that buildings began to appear in the corridor but, because it was a long, skinny space, those apartments had to be built along an east-west alignment rather than the north-south approach of surrounding suburban blocks.

To this day, those long apartment blocks - such as 35 Kembla Street, 54 Church Street and at 76 and 91 Corrimal Street - serve as a reminder of the route those coal deliveries travelled.

On a modern-day aerial map you can follow the line of those skinny apartment blocks and see where the rail tracks once were.

It also explains another oddity of the cityscape - the reason why the southern edge of Collegians is curved rather than going straight to the edge of Flinders Street.

That was the route the rail line took, so when the block Collies now sits on was formed it had to stop at the corridor.

Read more: Thirroul coalminers go on strike over a bathroom

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