Flinders Street Station**—**The icon!
With the invention of the passenger train [1820-1825], Victorian England discovered a new challenge: Building impressive train terminals.
Over the next hundred years many icons and signs of British Empire power were built across England and her colonies. Not to be outdone, Europe, then the USA and even distant South East Asia also started to build impressive, enormous and busy railway terminals. Even today, visitors to Victoria Station, Gare du Nord or Milano Centrale see the impressive grandeur of the past…
The list of impressive and grand Termini across the World is superb.
Here is a small taste:
Queen Victoria [Iron roof supports] in London, Gare du Nord/Paris [the busiest in Europe (?), Clapham Junction [the busiest rail traffic -every 13 seconds], Grand Central in New York [A work of art], Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in India [enormous, even by enormous standards], Milano Centrale [an excess of Italian marble ] and Luz station in Brazil.
This brings me to a famous, essential and Melbournian Icon.