Avondale Station – progress

An important part of the works being done to Auckland’s Western railway line is the relocation of the Avondale train station. The previous station was located in a poor location – directly on a bend in the line, and also did not have good connections to the Avondale town centre. This led to people regularly clambering across the tracks where they shouldn’t have, and also probably led to the station being used far less frequently than one would have expected. This is what the Project Dart website says about the upgrade:

The old Avondale Station was on a curve which made it difficult to get on and off the train, so we are moving it.

The station is being upgraded and moved to Layard Street. Construction is now well underway on the straight section of track between Crayford St and St Jude St , on the longer 140m platforms. The new station will be level with the road with several different access points.

The pedestrian level crossing will be upgraded with automatic gates to ensure safe crossing of the tracks and safe access to the platforms.

Construction at the new Avondale Station will be mostly complete by the end of 2009. The station will open when the future New Lynn rail trench is complete in mid-2010. In the meantime, the temporary station to the east of Blockhouse Bay Rd will allow work to continue.

To improve safety around the network we will install pedestrian mazes (see below) at the St Jude St, Chalmers St and St Georges Rd level crossings, along with new barrier arms. There is a new pedestrian crossing on Blockhouse Bay Rd to allow safe access from one platform to the other.

Back at the start of this year I took quite a few photos of the works involved in the double-tracking of part of the line through Avondale – and also the construction of the temporary station which has been operational since January this year. Today, I went back to Avondale, to see how things are coming along with construction of the station. While it certainly has a way to go, it was good to get some idea of the progress that is being made. I took the following photos.

The photo above looks west along the line from the bottom end of Crayford Street (its eastern end). This is where the station platforms will be constructed. This is the western-most edge of what has been currently double-tracked, although some sections between here and New Lynn are also two-track (although as far as I know only one of those tracks is used currently). This station will have great access to the Avondale town centre, which is located just down the street to the right of the photo. The above photo looks back the other way, towards the city, from the same spot. The link across the railway line is temporary at the moment – although it does provide a useful link joining the two halves of Avondale. The railway line had previously divided the two areas very harshly. The station will further reinforce this link between the two halves of this suburb. Here’s another photo looking west along the line – towards the future station. And another one looking back east towards the city. This photo looks west from between the current two tracks. I felt pretty safe taking this picture as there were no trains between Avondale and New Lynn today. And finally, this photo looks east from the same point.

I also took a bunch of photos of progress on the New Lynn station redevelopment. I’ll save those for another post.

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