a one station girl

I think I might have mentioned that Wynyard is my comfort station.  I love it, I could live there, I tell it secrets, etc.  Turns out I don't like the other stations at all, if by the other stations you mean Central and Town Hall.  If by the other stations you mean Circular Quay and Museum, well, then, that sentence isn't so accurate.  But it loses a lot of the punch, so I think we'll just stick with how it stands.

The problem with Town Hall is that all of the screens telling you where to go for your train when are located -- whose genius idea was this? -- outside the gates.  And not immediately outside the gates, halfway down the station outside the gates.  So you run in, run halfway down, check your time, run halfway back, forget which platform, run halfway back, recheck, run halfway again, miss your train, repeat.

The other problem with Town Hall is the amount of exits.  I haven't counted but I think there's at least half a dozen.  And while they've clearly gone to an effort to label them all, I still inevitably end up coming out the wrong on on the other side of the street (possibly even catty-corner if it's a particularly bad day).

I suppose the pros to Town Hall are that it is about as central as you can get (unlike, ahem, other stations that seem to indicate they might be centrally located) and that everyone knows it.  Wynyard cocks eyebrows of south-of-the-bridge types, which perhaps just shows they're trying to get their brows a bit higher.  Somebody of reasonably in-the-know repute told me Town Hall is actually the busiest station in Sydney, and I had no desire to question the authority.

As for Central, where do I even begin?  I think it's psychological.  It's a scary place.  Not so much in the dangerous sense as in the overwhelming sense.  It's just too big and sprawling for its own good, let alone anyone else's.  This is true inside and out.  If you find yourself on the wrong the side of the tracks, literally, it's a monster of a job to rectify the situation.  I'd call it a good 20 minutes and severe frustration.

Inside the station though it's not really better.  From what I can gather (I rarely go if I can help it) there are two main, huge, entirely separate parts.  One services trains that go a long way away and the other services trains that go a short way away.  Or something like that.  Goodness know where you'll send yourself if you end up in the wrong half.

Even if you end up in the right half, though -- which is much easier to do when you catch a train in to Central -- you still have the problem of figuring out where to go next.  You can follow signs to the ways out easily enough, but it's which way out that's the question.  I don't care which one you pick, you'll still spend at least ten, if not fifteen, minutes trying to just disentangle yourself from the station and emerge on real roads that you recognize.

So, for instance, I now work not that far from Central.  And it would, theoretically, make reasonable sense to take a train there.  I, however, after two tragic days of trying this maneuver, have decided to put my Australian vocabulary to use and give it a miss.

It just isn't worth the ten minute post-train trek to the street.  Sure, it looks nice and close on the map, but is it?  No!  The M30 does me just fine, thank you very much.

And you know how I feel about buses!