– Well G’day James Sutton here, and as you can see today, I’m here at Roseville Station to tell you some stories that we’ve recently dug up. The station here on Hill Street was officially opened on New Year’s Day in 1890, as part of the North Shore line, but interestingly, it was only called Rossville. Later that year, the name was changed to Roseville. The construction of the station had a massive impact on the establishment and growth of Roseville. In 1900, 68 blocks of land were offered on Roseville Avenue, Lord Street, and Archbold Road, which were known as the Roseville Station Estate. In 1906, a large subdivision of land was offered to the market which established blocks of land on Lord Street, Anne Street, and Henry Street. I found myself asking, “Where are Anne Street and Henry Street now?” Well, Anne Street was renamed to be Glencroft Avenue, and Henry Street became Bancroft Avenue. So the North Shore Line became very busy, and thousands of local people relied on it everyday to get to and from work, as now a board of arrivals and departures was standard at all stations. Then on July 28, 1950, train driver Francis Barrett suffered a fit of coughing as he left Roseville Station. Barrett had just come back to work having had the flu and his coughing fit caused him to lose control of the speed of the train. As you can see, it’s a very busy station still. The train ran into the back of a stationary train that had stopped at the Roseville signal and then a 3rd train hit Barrett’s from behind.

In a remarkable stroke of luck, the city-bound train was relatively empty due to an error in the indicator boards at Lindfield Station, where passengers boarded a different train on platform 1 instead of the train that crashed from platform 2. The resulting carnage of the crash was huge, 5 carriages were hurled off the line and dozens were smashed into pieces, as well as a resulting fire, yet only 12 were injured. The New South Wales Rail Network is now one of the safest in the world and the Roseville station benefited from an upgrade just a year ago when 2 new lifts and a toilet were added. Now the present day and we have got a fascinating listing, which is only 120 metres from here, a boutique complex of apartments called Nagari, which was converted from 4 units to 3, including the ground floor being a huge single-level home. The property is at 1-4/49 Pacific Highway in Roseville and offers a great opportunity for savvy investors, developers, given its R4 zoning. The story of the Roseville Station is absolutely integral to the evolution of this wonderful suburb, and I feel it’s very important that we retain the knowledge and stories of how we have evolved and I’ll continue to dig up these stories over the coming weeks and months. My name’s James Sutton, I’m the Principal at McGrath Wahroonga. If you’d like to discuss your property I’d be delighted to help you. Feel free to give me a call anytime on my number, which is 0422 704 370 or drop into our office anytime. Bye for now.