Platform

The platform at Bombala Railway Station is 88 metres of concrete running under a corrugated iron awning, weeds working steadily through the joints and cracks. Long shadows from the roof structure fall across the surface. Nothing is on the platform. Nothing has been on it for decades. NSW Government Railways opened Bombala Railway Station on 21 November 1921 as the southern terminus of the Goulburn-Bombala branch line. The line itself had been advancing south from Joppa Junction since 1884, reaching Cooma in 1889, Nimmitabel in 1912, and finally Bombala 37 years after the first sod was turned. Construction of the final 38-mile extension from Nimmitabel had begun in 1915 but stalled during the First World War before resuming. By the time the station opened, it was among the last rural branch line extensions to be built in New South Wales, arriving at the tail end of the state's railway expansion era. The station building is a Type 11 pre-cast concrete structure, one of approximately 140 standard NSWGR drop-panel concrete buildings constructed across regional NSW between 1919 and 1932. The platform served pastoral communities across the southern Monaro tablelands for 65 years. The last service ran on 26 March 1986, with 3 CPH railmotors making the final visit. The branch line itself was officially closed in May 1989 after the Numeralla River bridge at Chakola was declared unsafe. Heritage NSW lists Bombala Railway Station on the NSW State Heritage Register (SHR #01091), noting the station building as "one of the best pre-cast concrete structures to survive in the State." The site is assessed as historically rare, architecturally rare, and socially rare, significant in part because it preserves what comparable stations, long since demolished, no longer can. This photograph was made in 2016. The platform stretches away from the camera, intact and empty, the roof still standing over a surface that has not felt the weight of a passenger train in nearly four decades.