Oatley railway station is a heritage-listed railway station located on the Illawarra line, in the Sydney suburb of Oatley in the Georges River Council local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The station is served by Sydney Trains T4 line services. It was designed and built by the NSW Government Railway and from 1905 to 1992. It is also known as the Oatley Railway Station group. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
Oatley is notable as the end point of the first section of track to be electrified for regular passenger services, with services from Central commencing on 1 March 1926. Historically, some services used to terminate at Oatley before returning north; this is no longer the case but the points remain in place.
In January 2017 an upgrade to the station was opened, including a new overhead footbridge with lifts.
History
The Oatley area was named after James Oatley, who was granted in the area, called Needwood Forest, in 1833. Oatley never built on the grant and it passed to his third son after his death in 1839, who sold the land to Charles Cecil Griffiths in 1881. The property extended from Gungal Bay on the western edge to the later Boundary and Hurstville Roads.
In 1881, the proposed route for the Illawarra railway line was published and approved. In 1882, works began at Marrickville (now Sydenham) on railway construction. In 1884, the railway to Hurstville station opened (double track) with stations at Arncliffe, Rockdale, Kogarah and Hurstville. In 1885, the first single track line (built by C. & E. Miller) was opened as far as Sutherland station, with railway stations opened at Como, Penshurst, Mortdale, and Oatley. The small platform at Oatley, with a timber platform building, opened on 26 December 1885. Judd's Hurstville Brick Works opened in 1884, on a site north of Oatley (now the site of Georges River College). The location of Judd's brick works appears to have been a major reason for the building of Oatley railway station in 1885 in what was then a very sparsely populated area.
The railway station was first called "Oatley's Grant" (up to 1886) and then "Oatley's Platform" (by 1889). In 1890, "Oatley's Platform" finally changed to "Oatley". The line was duplicated in 1890. The Station Master's residence was built in 1891. Development in the area was slow – in 1893, there were only nine houses in the vicinity of the railway station. In 1903, a post office was established at the railway station.
In July 1905, regrading of the railway line led to the station being moved to the west of its original location, away from the Oatley town centre at Frederick St and Letitia St to the east. This relocation of the line was due to the steep gradient leading down to the Georges River bridge which the goods trains had difficulty climbing. The 1890 weatherboard platform building was relocated to the new station, onto a long curved brick island platform. The platform building is now only one of the two such weatherboard platform buildings of this type in Sydney (the other being at Penshurst railway station). Part of the former railway reservation is now the Oatley Memorial Gardens.
Access from one side of the line to the other was initially via a series of overbridges at various locations along the line. In some localities, these were too far apart, and construction of a series of brick arch subways was begun around 1905 and completed during the 1920s. Construction was in brickwork due to the large number of nearby brickworks. The 1905 brick arched Mulga Road underbridge at Oatley was designed by Per way Branch staff, New South Wales Government Railways. The platform is reached via a subway stair leading off Mulga Road which is part of the underbridge. The underbridge has a semi-circular brick barrel arch spanning over a two-lane roadway, and is thought to be the second largest brick arch underbridge in the NSW rail system. The centre of the bridge is now roofed, between the railway tracks (over the subway) however was unroofed in 1943.
In 1918, the present signal box was incorporated within the then open north end awning area of the platform building. The electrification of the line from St James to Oatley was undertaken in the 1920s, and the first electric train ran on 16 August 1926. This was the first line to be electrified.
In December 1930, disused railway land (the former railway alignment to the east) was officially transferred to Kogarah Council, and this became Oatley Memorial Gardens. When first built in 1905, the double track station had an engine road and goods siding on the eastern side but these were closed in 1940.