The new power house museum as no front entrance according to the news.
I'm not surprised as it must of been a moron who came up with the idea to move the museum out of the Sydney CBD and build it out in the sticks out in the west of Sydney.
So many bad decisions have been made in Sydney over the years they have wrecked the character of the city..
If I'm with the kids and it's a day out I'm not going to anywhere near the west, I'm going to be in the city so I won't be going again .

Pete

I don't see an issue with having a branch of the museum in Parramatta but moving the whole joint out there, away from the building that was once one of Sydney's major power stations seems odd. The extra space offered by having two sites could be used to permanently display hundreds of items that are currently kept locked away and thus useless to anyone.

One day, there will be an underground rail line between Sydney and Parramatta with the journey time of 20 minutes. This project has started. I doubt getting to Parramatta from Martin Place will be an issue for most people once that is done but the money to be spent on moving all the artifacts that are currently at the Pyrmont site could be better spent on even more good public transport.

Such artifacts include the original arrivals and departures board from Central Station and around a dozen trams, including the famous prison tram that ran between Central Court and Long Bay Gaol.

In the late 1990's I had the privilege to wander through the thousands of un exhibited items in the Museum storage areas and sympathising with the curator on what lies unseen. The Museum has not grown any bigger so I guess the thousands of exhibits not rotated are still there unseen.
The point is we have this "center city versus North/East/West suburb little dick syndrome" that obscures the fact that we should have TEN major museums in a city of this size! My English and European friends just roll their eyes and continue to see Australians as backward heathens with funny accents. This city is one of the largest, if not THE largest on the planet and we still have only ONE international airport and ONE museum. Laughing stock I can tell you.
At least we have an aggressive state government of a breed that is trying.
If the other mob were still in we would still have red rattlers on the train lines and good old Leyland buses for transport.
Fred.

I was taken as a kid to The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Harris St., Ultimo, and still remember my fascination with the various gadgets and contrivances and other fascinating exhibits. This was the immediate precursor to the Power House Museum, and I agree with the sentiment that it should not be moved from its present site, itself a historical site.
The beam engine on exhibit is world famous and would attract visitors from the regular cruise ships that visit Sydney. It is hard to see many of those finding their way to Parramatta.
As Brad says, better to open a branch of the museum in Parramatta and expand the items on exhibit, rather than replace it with a block of units or another casino or conference centre.

Loved the Red Rattlers. Gosh they were fun.
Years ago I restored a sports car that was restored for the power house museum they have had it on display a couple of times but mostly it's down in the storage area.
It's a fibre glass body and in those days all the spraying was done in acrylic .it had a mini 1275 engine in the rear and ran a 45 mm Webber . It had a bit of race history.
It had been registered at some stage in the late 60s early 70s...long time ago when I restored it , I was still cutting my teeth.

Pete

Back in my train driving days, I did many shifts at Darling Harbour Goods Yard (now gone). Next to it was an old tram shed, still with the rails and a few destination signs lying around. It was this that became the Power House Museum. Behind it was the actual Power House, a dismal brick wreck that once supplied power to the trams and railways (at least I think so).

At the northern end of the yard, it passed between a number of concrete columns from an abandoned project. That project was resurrected and became the Western Distributor. Further north, the railway came to Darling Island, with its old wharves, and another abandoned power house, this one was the Ultimo Power Station which had supplied power to business and houses in the area.

The railway continued on to Balmain Road, Rozelle Yard and White Bay, turned south and ended near Dulwich Hill. Eventually all of this was closed down, and the railway became a light rail system.

Darling Harbour featured a helipad, for the rich to get to the city quickly, lots of old wooden buildings, wool sheds and so on. Some of those sheds became home to squatters and eventually went up in huge fires, with the walls collapsing onto cars.

One day, when a helicopter was taking off, a blade came off and went straight through the neighbouring shed.

Yes, fun times in the late 70's-early 80's.



As for the current plans of the Museum, to me the whole thing seems badly thought out, another collosal waste of money. The place at Parramatta was flooded out the other day, and they don't even know where the front door will be - seems it was overlooked by the oh-so-brilliant planners.

Fred, you are quite right about the physical size of Sydney. At more than 12,000km² it is one of the largest cities in the world in land area but its a hard subject to research because different countries classify city boundaries differently. We tend to include the whole metropolitan area whereas some countries would define "Sydney" as just the CBD and the immediate surrounding suburbs.

But, yes, we have government building new rail networks, a second airport and lots of other stuff that ultimately should have been built 40 years ago. The metro rail network (deliberately being kept separate from the heavy rail network) will be a game changer once it is finished and it will be easy to add to without further disruptions because no trains on it will change lines and the other benefit is that there's no drivers or guards to go on strike or demand triple time in normal working hours next time we host the Olympics.

I was never a fan of bringing single deck trains back to Sydney but it's better than nothing.

If I'm having a family day with kids I'm going to go to the city where there are options of things to do and places to go.
I will try to do as many things in that one day so going all the way out to Parramatta which is miles from the city is just not worth it. Plus the building it was in had meaning and history.
But the benefits of it being in the city means a whole day of fun with different activities to do in the same area.
Pete

White Bay Power Station supplied power to the railways though Pyrmont may well have been used as a backup, although the power stations weren't linked by a grid back then. If the station went offline, so did its customers. It's hard to imagine that even though Sydney's population was a lot smaller back then, with all the industry that existed, there were only five major power stations serving the metropolitan area. White Bay, Pyrmont, Ultimo, Balmain and Bunnerong. There were other stations but they were much smaller.

Pyrmont was built for the tram network and expanded massively as the tram network grew, It includes a tunnel used for cooling water from the harbour, this now is used by the building's air conditioning system.

White Bay was for the trains. Later on the two stations were linked. The train network used to sell power to some of the municipal councils as recently as the 1950s.