The race to visit every Sydney train station in one day

5 days ago 3

It is no secret that Sydneysiders love races, with tens of thousands lacing up their running shoes for the City2Surf and Sydney Marathon each year.

But for die-hard rail enthusiasts, the finish line of their iconic Sydney race is not a ribbon, it’s tapping off with their Opal card.

Founded 20 years ago, the All Stations Train Race has the hallmarks of a conventional race: a test of speed, endurance and grit. Beginning at 4am, and travelling on only scheduled train services, participants must visit all of Sydney’s 185 train and metro stations in the fastest time possible.

Sydney’s All Stations Train Race takes place two or three times a year, and every attempt takes at least 15 or 16 hours.

Scheduled race days have taken place at least once annually for more than 20 years, with 545 people completing the challenge.

It’s a feat that requires painstaking planning. Every moment, from toilet breaks to meal stops, train changes and the time to walk across platforms, is calculated right down to the second. While it is not required to get off the carriage at each stop, the train must stop at every station, and participants are forbidden from catching buses or walking between stations.

The clock starts when your first train leaves Central, and ends when your last train pulls into Central. The record time of 16 hours, 3 minutes and 13 seconds was set by John Darcy in September last year, after the opening of the city section of Sydney’s M1 metro line.

Each year, Dave Anderson attempts to travel through all 185 stations on Sydney’s rail network in a single day to raise money for charity.

Rail enthusiast Scott Adam-Smith has completed the challenge annually for the past five years, and has a personal best of about 15 hours and 28 minutes, recorded before the metro extension opened. He describes it as “a bit of a crazy hobby” well-suited to those who are detail-oriented with a keen interest in transport and railway networks.

“You just get your head into the timetables – that sounds like such a nerdy thing, and it probably is,” he said.

But Adam-Smith admits the race day itself can be “pretty grim”.

“The best part is always when you finish or when you start because you’re full of optimism. But sometimes you get to the middle of the day and you think, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve just done five hours and I’ve got another 11 to go’.”

Similar feats are celebrated across the globe: New York’s Rapid Transit Challenge is a race across its 472 stations, while the Guinness World Records-recognised Tube Challenge in London traverses its 272 stations.

Adam-Smith described Sydney’s race as “tame in comparison” with London’s, which he completed in 18 hours.

“Sydney is a lot more laid back – there are toilets at almost every station, and if you miss a train you just sit around for 15 minutes and wait for the next one,” he said. “But London was crazy. There were no toilets anywhere, and the tube is running frequently, so you had to run between lines.”

The Sydney course is an evolving beast, changing with the changing network. The last major update was when sections of the T3 Bankstown line closed in August 2024 to be converted to metro standards.

While this means pinning down the fastest route is more difficult, Adam-Smith said it makes the challenge more interesting.

It took Dave Anderson 18 hours last year to visit every single train and metro station in Sydney.

“That’s part of the fun, that the timetable changes every couple of years, which changes all the combinations, and you get to rerun all your solutions and try to figure out how to do it the fastest [again].”

Dave Anderson is another Sydney train racer. His all-day Train Ride to End Polio with his father, Mark, is now in its eighth year, and has raised more than $880,000 for Rotary’s End Polio campaign.

Unlike the All Stations race, which is in pursuit of the fastest record, Anderson’s goal is to be on time.

Their 18-hour journey begins at Cronulla at 4.33am, and ends at Tallawong at about 10.30pm.

They have made it to Olympic Park station – accessible only by an infrequent shuttle train from Lidcombe – on five out of their eight attempts, which Anderson describes as their personal “Everest”.

Another year they got unlucky with a lightning strike that caused a power outage on the entire T1 Richmond train line.

“Thankfully, most of the network is on a 15-minute cycle, so if we miss one train the same thing will happen 15 minutes later,” Anderson said.

“It’s less about the trains themselves and more about the network and the connectivity. Waratah, Millennium or Tangara [trains], that doesn’t matter to me.

“It’s more about where can I get to? What can I see? And how can I connect from here to there? There are so many things happening in our city. The railway network affords you the opportunity to discover a part of Sydney you’ve never been to.”

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