The whites- only concourse
tunnels under the station

Tunnels and tunnelling made Johannesburg what it is. The station, likewise, could never have functioned without its tunnels. From the mid-twenties Johannesburg had rapidly become a motorised city with traffic congestion a not unfamiliar sight. A very important part of the lives of Johannesburgers was the mail. The public, accustomed over the years to mailing letters at a certain time for a certain train, did not suffer mail delays gladly and as the road traffic increased it became ever more difficult for the post office vans to keep time for delivery at Park Station. In a bold step, the SAR and General Post Office jointly decided to move the mail by means of a tunnel and conveyor belts underneath the city between Jeppe and Noord streets. Work on this began in 1931.

The system was a great success and worked efficiently. At any time the main tunnel could handle 600 bags of mail per hour with ease. Its value came to be fully realised in the fifties when the new post-war station was under construction and the conveyor came to a halt. As the new station had to be lowered, the tunnels were demolished and replaced with new ones. Also new was a branch tunnel leading west, crossing Harrison Street where it terminated - to await the building of the new post office mail sorting depot at old Kaserne. The tunnels did sterling work in their day and certainly ensured a smart mail service. In 1956 the conveyors handled over 7000 bags per day, or 25 tons of mail. When Spoornet lost the Post Office contract for carrying the mail in the 1980's, a historic link between the railways and the Post Office was severed. The tunnels are still there, unused, abandoned.

The designers of the new station also went to great lengths to rid the complex forever of the practice of mixing passenger traffic with parcels and baggage. Adopting the overseas practice, a further system of tunnels was built to link the mainline platforms with the baggage and parcels offices on the north of the station and within easy reach of the Leyds Street entrance. This development silenced the booming 'Mind the barrow!' forever from Park Station.

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