page_title: John Bradfield (engineer)
section_title: Sydney Harbour Bridge and Bradfield railway scheme
hierarchical_section_title: John Bradfield (engineer) / Professional career / Sydney Harbour Bridge and Bradfield railway scheme
caption_attribution_description: English: Australian engineer John Bradfield, tipping his hat from a walkway on the newly constructed Sydney Harbour Bridge
context_page_description: John Job Crew Bradfield CMG was an Australian engineer best known as the chief proponent of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, of which he oversaw both the design and construction. He worked for the New South Wales Department of Public Works from 1891 to 1933, although he was a Queenslander by birth. He was the first recipient of an engineering doctorate from the University of Sydney. Other notable projects with which he was associated include the Cataract Dam, the Burrinjuck Dam, and Brisbane's Story Bridge. The Harbour Bridge formed only one component of the City Circle, Bradfield's grand scheme for the railways of central Sydney, a modified version of which was completed after his death. He was also the designer of an unbuilt irrigation project known as the Bradfield Scheme, which proposed that remote areas of western Queensland and north-eastern South Australia could be made fertile by the diversion of rivers from North Queensland.
context_section_description: It was not until 1922 that the Bridge Bill passed through Parliament. Much of his work on the Sydney Harbour Bridge involved the assistance of his secretary Kathleen Muriel Butler, who was much more than a secretary, involved in the checking of specifications and negotiations with tenderers.
  Bradfield had a grand vision for Sydney's railway system. Bradfield called for the provision of a network of underground city railway lines beneath Sydney's central business district, the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a new railway station, Central. While the central idea of an underground loop beneath the city was implemented, and stub tunnels built at designated interchanges for provision of future lines, many of his related ideas remain unimplemented. A larger network of lines was proposed for the western, eastern and southern suburbs, however most of these lines remain conceptual and have never been constructed.
  The building of the bridge coincided with the construction of a system of underground railways in Sydney's Central business district, known today as the City Circle, and the bridge was designed with this in mind. The bridge was designed to carry four lanes of road traffic, flanked on each side by two railway tracks and a footpath. Both sets of rail tracks were linked into the underground Wynyard railway station on the southern end of the bridge by symmetrical ramps and tunnels.
  The eastern-side railway tracks were intended for use by a planned rail link to the Northern Beaches, though they were used for tram services from the North Shore to Wynyard station. The intention was to operate tram services until the implementation of a heavy rail service to the Northern Beaches; however, when tram services were discontinued in 1958, they were converted into extra road traffic lanes, which now serve the Cahill Expressway and a city-bound bus lane.
  The Depression, and later World War II, along with the post-War growth of motor vehicle usage led to projected patronage of passenger services in Bradfield's plan being overestimated. Parts of the city underground were constructed and exist as the present-day City Circle. Small sections were also built for additional proposed city lines, such as additional platforms at Wynyard and St James railway stations which have never been used for heavy rail transport.
  In 1923, the first sod was turned on the city railway. The City Circle was constructed originally as a stub line to St James, via the Town Hall, Wynyard and towards the Harbour Bridge. It was not until 1955 that the loop was completed by the construction of Circular Quay station. A line to the eastern suburbs was eventually built, but along a different alignment to that envisaged by Bradfield, who proposed a line along Oxford Street.
  Bradfield retired from the New South Wales Department of Public Works at the end of July 1933 after 42 years of service with the intention of continuing to work as a consulting engineer.
caption: Bradfield doffing his hat to onlookers from the newly constructed Sydney Harbour Bridge
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