Cardiff Locomotive Workshops

The Cardiff Locomotive Workshops (now known as the Cardiff Maintenance Centre) is a rail yard and rolling stock facility located between Cockle Creek and Cardiff stations near Newcastle, on the Main North railway line in New South Wales, Australia.

The site is currently occupied by Downer Rail, where rolling stock is assembled, maintained and stored.

The Hunter River Railway Company established meagre maintenance facilities adjacent to its line at its eastern terminus, near the current day Civic station. Civic Station is no longer in use. (All stations from Wickham to Newcastle are now served by the Newcastle Light Rail which terminates at Newcastle Beach. Opened 17 February 2019) These formed the basis of the Honeysuckle Point Workshops the old buildings of which now lie within the area redeveloped by the Honeysuckle Development Corporation.

The workshops grew in size as the isolated Northern system developed. Even when the first Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge linked it with the Sydney in 1889, a bright future for the workshops was assured. However, by 1925 the decision had been taken to abandon Honeysuckle Point as a locomotive centre and to build a new workshop with modern facilities, on a site where greater expansion could take place.

On 15 November 1925 127 acres of swamp land was purchased from 13,000 pounds. In November 1925, 172 acres (69.6ha) of land was purchased from the Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company and design of the new workshops began. The design was completed in time for work to start in the middle of 1926. The first sidings were connected to the main line in April, a platform for workers was in place by June and all sidings were completed by September of that year. Construction of the foundations for the buildings was well advanced by this time and erection of the steelwork started early the following year. By the end of 1927 the building work was virtually complete.

Machinery and tooling had been ordered early in 1927 and supplies began arriving throughout the year. Two 75-ton cranes were installed in the Erecting Shops. By early 1928, the first locomotives entered the facility and were under repair. The first locomotive to leave the workshops was 3364. The Annual Report of the New South Wales Government Railways to 30 June 1928, shows that by that date Cardiff Workshops had already overhauled 14 locomotives and repaired 15 boilers.

The official opening took place on 1 March 1928. By this time the facilities were fully functional. Honeysuckle Point was now a garage for Departmental motor vehicles and a permanent way workshop. A platform to serve the works was opened as Sulphide Junction.

As built, the Cardiff Workshops were a show-piece and were visited by engineers to see the form of construction and layout used. The building covered 150,725 square feet (14,000 m²). Central to the shop was a traverser. The traverser lined up with five inwards roads from which locomotives could be drawn and conveyed to any of 22 pits in the two erecting shops inside. Similarly, tenders and bogies for the tender shop made their way to the two roads provided via the traverser.