Pic Nic railway station

Pic Nic railway station, alternatively Pic-Nic, Pic-nic^[1] or Picnic, was a railway station in Melbourne, Australia. It was on the Hawthorn line (now the Belgrave and Lilydale line), on the Melbourne side of the Hawthorn Railway Bridge over the Yarra River,^[2]^[3] between Church Street (now East Richmond) and Hawthorn stations, and provided access to the adjacent Burnley Park.

The line to the station was opened by the Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company on 24 September 1860, and was extended to Hawthorn seven months later, following the completion of the Hawthorn Railway Bridge.

The station was included in the sale of the line to the Victorian Railways in 1878, and the duplication of the track to Hawthorn in 1882.^[4]

The station was the scene of a serious accident on 2 December 1882, when two trains collided head-on. One person was killed and 178 injured when a special train, returning from a land sale at Box Hill, collided with a scheduled train from Melbourne to Camberwell.^[5]

On 6 October 1895, Pic Nic was closed as a block point, and the station closed to all traffic on 18 July 1898.^[4] There is now an axle counter near the site, almost certainly a coincidence.^{[citation needed]}

Today, there is still remnants of Pic Nic, with bluestone bricks used in the stations platform still visible today near the Glen Waverley lines crossover.

References

^ "Pic-nic Station". The Cornwall Chronicle. Launceston, Tas. 2 January 1861. p. 3. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
^ Grieg, A. W. (14 September 1935). "Old Railway Stations Along the Hawthorn Line". The Argus. Melbourne, Vic. p. 7. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
^ Map of Melbourne and Suburban Company Lines, 1857–1862, archived from the original on 8 August 2008, retrieved 15 November 2011
^ ^a ^b "VICSIG". vicsig.net. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
^ "Disastrous Railway Accident". The Argus. 4 December 1882. Retrieved 19 July 2019.