This report is presented ,as a handbook on which other work will be based. It represents a stage which is believed to cover most of the standard station building types, which continue to be identified in other situations. Changes are being absorbed to the last, and continue. * * * * 22 . 23 . Morpeth branch. Tight curves and heavy grades on the system are a legacy of this period, up to the 1870's. The Railway Act of 1888 led to a new approach to administration, under three Commissioners,

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... shed under Chief Commissioner Eddy who proceeded to stamp his personality upon the system. Economy was considered an essential. A self-supporting railway system was the goal, with consolidation by expansion to previously untouched parts of the State, by duplication of the track, and by deviations designed to upgrade lines by shortening the route. The island platform and stations were introduced, with new, and initially experimental, standard building types which became the prototype for so many familiar stations. Formerly, station prototypes were tried in the country, then in town. Now the opposite was more true. Steel or brick bridges began to replace timber. Two distinct classes of building were to evolve, those for the public, and those reserved for railway use. There were six types of line: suburban (such as ST. LEONARDS to MILSONS POINT of 1893); goods (as FLEMINGTON to ABATTOIRS of 1911); pioneer construction in two varieties, country branch (as TAMWORTH to BARRABA of 1908) and cross country (as GLENBROOK to MT. VICTORIA of 1910); duplication works (as, again, GLENBROOK to MT. VICTORIA of 1910, a later phase); and deviation works (such as the elimination of the Lithgow Zig Zag in 1905) .