Ah, yes, the old manual indicator boards that used to be at pretty much every Sydney train station. I actually walked past these very boards for much of my high school, college and early working career, as Eastwood was my local station. 

Of course, these venerable boards have now finally been replaced with newer electronic signs that update automatically without the need for the stationmaster to come and flick over all the station names manually, first holding down the little foot pedal to unlock the rotating signs. (Those are actually recent additions: the stationmaster used to have to bend down and press a button on the underside of the board.)

For smaller stations which only had an up/down service pattern, these boards were pretty much ideal for quickly determining which platform the next train was leaving from and where it would stop. The trick at Eastwood was always working out whether it was worth waiting a few minutes for the express train rather than the all stations one. 

Obviously, the bigger the station, the less effective these simple boards became. Strathfield’s eight platforms were pretty unwieldy, and Central’s myriad platforms and services became almost impossible to decipher for all but the most seasoned train commuters.

The photo above does have one oddity: the board on the far left shows a city-bound train leaving from Platform 3, which is normally a Hornsby-bound platform.

Still: nostalgia.

Source: dunedoo/Flickr