Night of 8 September 1951

'Hundreds of Johannesburg's citizens missed their cinema show on Saturday night, 8 September, to watch the switch-over of tracks from the old to the new Johannesburg station. But they did not miss the show after all, for the remarkable feat of moving 2000 tons of earth overnight and laying new tracks to take the city's traffic without serious disruption of services was something worth seeing and remembering.' So reported the SA Railway News in the October 1951 issue on one of the most dramatic moments during the building of the new station.

Working throughout the night, engineers, gangers and three hundred labourers under flood-lights moved complete sets of track to make way for the bulldozers which stood ready for excavating the last ground. When finished, new track was placed in position. At 07h35 on Sunday morning the first train rolled in on platform 15. Frank Garrison, who was there that night, mentioned years later that the 'rhythmic sing-song of the Africans aroused cheers from the onlookers every time the track moved a few inches forward'. It was indeed something worth seeing and remembering.

In her autobiography, Call me Woman, Ellen Khuzwayo recalled how she was met by her estranged father on Park Station.

'The sight of him on the platform as the train pulled into Johannesburg was indeed a great relief to me. I immediately felt protected and safe in the massive complex of Johannesburg Station - very strange to me….. I was bewildered by everything that was going on around me. There were crowds, some moving, some just waiting. There was the noise of the locomotives, the shuffling of feet and the voices of the commuters. A steep flight of steps led up to each platform, and huge pillars rose up around me.'

In her short story, Die Vriendelike Begin, writer Elsa Joubert also reminisced about her arrival in Johannesburg.

'There was…. Almost no space to reach the window and slide down the window to catch my first glimpse of my new home, Johannesburg. The train stopped, we climbed out into the cold darkness of the half-completed underground station. I received my first gulp of the biting wind of a Highveld winter morning now blowing at speed through the tunnels of the stations. Suddenly, our Cape winter clothes were totally inadequate, my teeth began chattering with cold…. In the baggage room, temporarily installed whilst the station was being built, a small oil stove was burning, and blessedly there is a door to shut against the wind which is pursuing us like a dog.'

Doris Lessing, in a short story, 'A Road to the Big City', painted a picture of the buffet at Park Station.

'The train left at midnight, not at six. Jansen's flare of temper at the clerk's mistake died before he turned from the counter: he did not really mind…. He went into the station buffet, it was a bare place, with shiny brown walls and tables arranged regularly. He sat before a cup of strong orange-coloured tea…'

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