00:00Welcome to Canberra's ghost railway station. It's ghost for two reasons.
00:06Firstly because it's no longer here and secondly because when it was built back
00:12in 1926 it was built to serve a community that didn't eventuate so the
00:18station and platform were pulled down after 30 years with very little use.
00:23Today there's not much of the platform left but if you look hard enough you can
00:28come across part of the old foundation here, the platform, this chunk of concrete.
00:34Just be careful where you sit.
00:38A bit further along is this chunk of bricks which was likely the support for
00:46the station sign. Still holds a bit of weight.
00:55Anne Forrest grew up just a few hundred meters from here and might just have been the last person
01:01to catch a train from the lonely whistle stop before it closed in May 1956.
01:09So Anne, we're at the location of the former Letchworth station and you may well have caught
01:14the last train from here in 1956. I know, I can't believe it. I was probably just nine years old
01:23so
01:24the fact that it was the last train would have been significant for my father and mother but I was
01:30probably unaware. So your house was literally only a few hundred meters from here?
01:34Yes, I can see where our home was and my father drove me across the paddock when he waited for
01:40the train
01:40and then my grandmother met me at Central in Sydney.
01:45So you're a nine-year-old. When your dad left you off on the train he did, was there someone
01:51to look
01:51after you on the train?
01:52Well I assume, I have no recollection of ever being concerned. I assume I was put into the care of
02:00the
02:01guard and probably sitting in a carriage close to the guard's room at the back of the train.
02:10Now, how long did the trip take?
02:13Oh, hours.
02:14Would have taken a long time, like six hours back then maybe?
02:17It may have even been a sleeper.
02:18Right, okay.
02:19Depending on what time of day that train ran.
02:22Right, and there was a little platform not far from where we're standing right now,
02:25so you waited on the platform and they would have had to hail the train down
02:30because it wouldn't have always stopped here because hardly anyone ever got on the train here.
02:34We lived across the paddock and we never saw trains stopping at Letchworth during my childhood.
02:39How do you feel being back here today at the very spot where you caught that train
02:44all those years ago? What's that, 70 years ago you caught the train from where we're standing?
02:50Does it feel 70 years ago?
02:52Okay Tim, I'm 79.
02:53Does it feel that long ago?
02:55No.
02:56What does it feel like happened the other day?
02:58Ah, it's sort of surreal.
03:02I've always repeated that story about getting on the train at Letchworth
03:06but you say these things and people just think, really?
03:12But there was a beautiful Letchworth sign just like the one at Tuggeranong siding here
03:19and we as children used to come over and play in this area
03:22but we knew the times of the train so we were not allowed to play up on the train line.
03:28To put school...
03:29Go will be?
03:32Good win.
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