Central — Local services in Sydney

Travel early Oct 2022. No places to sit and wait ... only a 2nd rate cafe.. or a bar . There is very little choice of food at the cafe . Not pleasant to wait between country trains .. especially if you are a senior like us . Even a few park benches would help. This made travel from Brisbane to Canberra exhausting with a 5 hour transit wait . The new escalators run too fast .. we could not get on it... only OK for younger people .. so make sure you use the lift if you are a senior and need to go downstairs . Central seems mainly a station for suburban passengers and country/regional travellers are mostly forgotten. Good points were the large indicator board for train times and light rail very easy access . These trams go to the city, Circular Quay and some suburbs on two main lines. Trains to other suburbs are downstairs where large works are going on. Why not have a small lounge for regional train passengers who often must wait several hours? Better still perhaps NSW could look at rail stations overseas.

Looking forward to the new country trains to replace the XPT and Explorer ... But I hear they are delayed and not likely to arrive before 2024. Current trains have no WiFI or phone charging points. Even first class seats on XPT & Explorer do not fully lay back. Train crews need to control the temperature in each carriage ... Ours got to 24 deg C which made me very uncomfortable. Crew said it was 23 and did nothing... despite the obvious difference with...

I have fond memories of this part of the station and catching country and interstate trains here in the 70s. Since then, it seems to have lost much of its character and identity but is slowly clawing it back. I am delighted to see the restoration of ceiling / wall decorations in the food court and the World War 1 memorial boards. It was a fantastic idea to return the railway bookshop to the concourse: there was a constant stream of interested people dropping in during the short time I was perusing the shelves (and buying two books). There is plenty of space for people to move about but the number of seats near platforms 1 to 3 proved inadequate for the demand at times. Our plans to cloak our bags were thwarted by a long queue to the concourse exit, but when I later saw the price (hidden well inside): $12 per item or more!!! I was glad we kept our bags and had a late morning tea down the escalator from the light rail platform at Cafe Du Nord. I expect this was some bureaucrat's idea to privatise and wipe their hands of the cloaking responsibility? As for lockers - did they vanish even before transparent rubbish bins were installed? Another need for a grand railway terminal is showers for travellers who have endured over night rail journeys (and a secure place to cloak their belongings while showering - and at a reasonable cost!) But now that passengers have been transformed into customers we are only cash cows for bureaucrats who travel by plane rather than the...

Incompetent personal and waste of time as a result... Tried to open account online via website few times and because of many errors on the web-page had to call support. With help of support I was told that I registered an account have 2 options for my identity verification (first one is to visit office which was not the best for me during pandemic time and the second one - they will send to my address some docs for verification). I preferred not to visit office and started waiting for docs. Almost 2 weeks - no docs and no response. Visited office at haymarket and spent half an hour there proving that I don't need a license for financial instruments trading if I am a sole trader and using my own money only. Finally account was established. On the next day I transferred some money to the account just for testing reason and was not able to send it back. Call to support and wasting of time again. They started claiming that I have to have a certificate for my business if I have ABN. I've got a confirmation only when I registered for Sole trader and all the information about ABN is available online. So I decided not to waste my time on this and asked to close my account and guess what??? I have to visit the...