Anniversary Special Stop 1: Clyde

Welcome to the first instalment of my 1 year anniversary special miniseries. For this, we're dialling the mediocrity up to eleven with the first of many completely forgettable Carlingford Line suburbs.

Clyde

Who the hell is Clyde?

Don't bother asking the residents because there aren't any. No really, there are literally zero people who live in Clyde, just check the census results.

From: https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC10941

More practically, Clyde is the first station on the T6 Carlingford Train Line, and where you can transfer onto the rest of the network. If you choose to get here on a real train instead, it's a 32 minute ride west from Central. Interestingly, this station is only around 500m from Granville station - you can literally smell the charcoal chicken from the station.

For an unpopulated suburb the station is predictably quiet.

So if no people live in Clyde, what is actually here?

Not much.

Setting foot reveals that this is a broadly industrial suburb, with warehouses, small industrial parks and auto repair shops.

This place will paint your vehicle if you let them, as evidenced by this pretty sweet boat in their front yard.

The station's street (adorably named Berry St) spills out onto the extremely busy intersection of Parramatta Road and James Ruse drive, where you can find car dealers and places to buy forklifts.

I normally avoid main roads on my walks, but Parramatta Road here does have one thing of interest: one of the few level crossings on the Sydney train network. Due to the low frequency of the Carlingford Train line, the government's never bothered to remove this rail and car intersection. At least they have boom gates.

This also means that for the odd Parramatta Road pedestrian, it's probably best to look up from your phone before strolling into a train's path.

Turning off Parramatta Road and continuing north to one of the many George Sts in existence reveals, as you would expect, more industry, albeit with much better footpaths than some residential suburbs I've been to.

Here's some rusty cars for your viewing pleasure.

This street led me onto where James Ruse Drive meets the M4 motorway, where I got to enjoy some fine vehicular fumes as I continued to the suburb's northern border.

Apparently, somewhere over there, Clyde is host to Sydney speedway, a local race track, but its straight up impossible to cross this road on foot so you'll have to just imagine it.