Rail tunnel at the Opera House.

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

Perhaps someone else already commented on this last week, but:

It was reported here last week that there was a grille covering a
large shaft near the sandstone wall at the Opera House, at the bottom
of which appeared to be a tunnel and, on the floor of the shaft, there
were rails.

The grille is there, the shaft is there, the tunnel is there- but the
rails are not there.

The grille is about 20 metres by 5 metres longitudinally aligned with
the sandstone cliff.  It covers a pit, the centre half of which is a
shaft probably, as originally asserted, descending below water level.
Two large ducts run up or down the walls.  At the bottom, heading
towards the Opera House, it is hard to see what happens.  Heading
south, under the Botanic Gardens/Government House reserve appears to
be an arched-roofed tunnel, witha series of thick vertical concrete
bars blocking access.  Emerging from the tunnel appears to be a strip
of metal, the sort of thing that one might associate with the "tracks"
of a "Compactus" filing system (to that extent, it might be a "rail").
But there is only one of these things and it is in no sense a rail of
the sort that lies at the bottom of aus.rail.

Further along the cliff, near the man O' War jetty, there is another,
bigger, circular, vent, that looks like it ought to house a giant
exhaust fan.  It is partly blocked off and also has a chain fence
around it preventing easy rubber-necking- but it doesn't have rails in
the bottom of it, either.

Geoff Lambert