I got off at Sydney’s spookiest train station and this is what I found

Some days we fly past a blur of steel, concrete and orange signage. From the windows, the ghostly station looks to be home to more train carriages than people.

Some days the disembodied voice issues a flat warning. “This train will stop at Macdonaldtown.” The question that most often springs to mind is, why?

This is Sydney’s station without a suburb, population zero.

Hardly anyone seems to get on or off when the train does bother to stop: those who do are typically Newtowners or Erskinevillagers who live close by, and Sydney Trains employees (the stabling yards dominate the vista to the south, graffiti-strewn concrete to the north).

Until a recent Friday, I had never walked among the denizens of Macdonaldtown. After nine years in Sydney, always living in or near the inner west, I’d visited every other station between Central and Strathfield. There was always a purpose to those visits; Macdonaldtown never seemed to have rhyme or reason. It seemed spooky.

To step off the T2 line and enter Macdonaldtown is to step into a quieter time. The single island platform is devoid of advertising and vending machines, as well as people.

There are no frills, no lifts and there is limited access: just stairs and a tunnel, a pretty mural at the entrance disguising the fact there were once more platforms, and obligatory Opal paraphernalia.

It is a hive of inactivity. Express services give it a miss, and more trains pass than stop. Opal data shows there were 314,251 taps for entry and 304,606 exit taps at the station last year, an average of 860 a day in and 835 a day out.

It would be unfair to compare Macdonaldtown to Redfern’s behemoth station a short walk away, where millions of taps are recorded each year and many more passengers switch lines.

Newtown, the next stop west, also has many more services and attracts about 10 times the passengers. Fairer comparisons are Stanmore and, on a different line, Erskineville, which each have more than double the passengers.

Macdonaldtown occupies a curious place in Sydney history. The urban legend has it that the name was wiped off the map after the 1892 discovery of dead babies in a Macdonaldtown property linked to murderers John and Sarah Makin, along with others at places the couple rented. The Makins were convicted in March 1893 and the suburb disappeared soon after.

The reality appears more mundane: moves were afoot to absorb Macdonaldtown into Erskineville in April 1892 before the bodies were found. One reason given was that property values would rise about 5 per cent. Some things in Sydney are timeless.

One of the station’s greatest fans is Tommaso Bocchini, a 19-year-old exchange student from New York. As clouds hover, he sits on a bench with 13 minutes on the clock until the next train.

“From our apartment it’s a lot easier,” he says, extolling the virtues of his walk past a cafe and how there is less foot traffic and fewer red lights than the annoying trek to Newtown station.

“Here it’s really nice,” he says. “I like coming here a lot better. It’s a lot easier.”

The test on his patience is outweighed by the chance to absorb the peace and quiet, or digest the day’s lecture or tutorial. Bocchini says other students he lives with feel the same about their go-to station, and he is positive about Sydney’s public transport system as he finds the trains and buses much cleaner and more reliable than what he gets at home.

“I see a lot of weird things on the New York subway. It’s just so much better here than New York.”

Not everyone has held the station in such high regard. In July 1986, aspiring artist John Baxter thought the “large grey scar” on the Sydney landscape needed improvement. Along with his younger brother, the 18-year-old attempted to turn the station a bright pink. His brother was caught paintbrush in hand. Baxter appeared in court later in the year, but no conviction was recorded; the magistrate and commuters alike considered his handiwork an improvement.

Baxter, remembered as “audacious, fearless and clever” in a tribute two years ago after his death in Edinburgh aged 56, had spent about $200 on the paint and chose the colour because it stood in direct contrast to grey.

Others have eyes on a more modern facelift. The City of Sydney has mentioned Macdonaldtown as a place for greater housing, given the state government’s policy of increasing density around transport hubs. The government, which has resurrected plans for a station at Woollahra, points out there is critical rail infrastructure in the precinct.

Should more housing come, Sydney’s spooky station might find itself getting busier. And it may also get a new coat of paint.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.