This guide was created to help students of 11551, 11552, 11553 and 11554 address their research task to do with primary materials on Sydney's Central Station. Guide by David.Litting@uts.edu.au / 95143390. Please contact me if you have any questions or need assistance.
Places where you can primary evidence
State Library of New South Wales
The State Library has some good digitized image content, including early drawings of the station and photographs and plans of the site before construction. There's not a whole lot of writing on Central station though.
National Library
The National Library's main strength is its digitized newspaper collections, which cover the period in great detail. You can refine searches to online materials, and also by decade.
Hathi Trust
The Hathi trust is a search engine for digitized books, containing a wealth of literature from the 1800's. You'll be able to find architectural writing in full here, as well as books on railway engineering and publications arising from the building trade. Content tends to be American focused, however.
JSTOR
JSTOR is mainly a journal database, but it also contains primary documents. The journal collections go back as far as the late1800's in some cases. An example of what you might be able to find is State Railways in Australia from the December 1894 issue of the Journal of Political Economy.
State Archives
The state archive does have floor plans of Central Station (here's an example), though you would have to visit them to see them, and that is currently by appointment only. Most of their digitized collection is photographs, which cover happenings in and around Central in the 1940's and 50's. It also has drawings and documents by Government Architect William L. Vernon, a couple of which have been digitised.
RIBA Library
The RIBA library contains an outstanding collection of architectural writing going back hundreds of years. Unfortunately the content is not digitized, but you might be able to find titles here that you can then search for in full elsewhere, such as the Hathi Trust, the National Library or Google Books. RIBA also has an image database
Not primary evidence, but interesting
NSW State Heritage Register & Heritage NSW
These two bodies both have very useful dossiers on Central station, including remarks on the buildings construction and heritage value. Heritage NSW contains documents including the conservation management plan for the station. These materials are not primary evidence, but will support your primary evidence and understanding of the buildings.
Here's a link to the shared document we used in class, if you need it
