Hope Island Station has officially joined the SEQ network, with the first service departing at 4:24 AM this morning bound for the Brisbane Domestic Airport.
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Thanks for sharing the photographs. Looking good. Small crowd for the first service?
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Yes small crowd of enthusiasts. Some commuters too!
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Now it needs lune extends to Cooly! 
Its great it can get me closer to start of DSMR 
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maybe it’ll get to cooly by the time I reach retirement!
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That station looks great. From what I can see in the photos it seems like a well designed and usable station for all sorts of needs, and also looks quite nice aesthetically too. I reckon this station won’t be quite as busy as it seems Pimpama is, but I do think it is useful putting that station there. I do hope that they can improve the span and frequency of connecting bus routes across that whole northern Gold Coast region. The jury is out for me on the point of putting in the Merrimac station, but that’s a topic for another day.
Thanks for sharing the photos!
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Just had a visit - I arrived about 8:30am and the park n ride was full which was good to see
The design was really nice, definitely one of the better stations from an aesthetic point of view in the SEQ network in my opinion
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That’s good that it’s being well used already!
I reckon that kind of design would be a good option for Central station, although I think it should have its name changed to Anzac Square or Ann Street (Anzac Square is my preference though).
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They need to add a few bus stops along Oxley Drive for all 3 routes in this section. I also think it would have been better to have the 709 serve the Hope Island shops. There seems to be this habit of sending buses past useful destinations but making them inaccessible (eg 747 still not stopping anywhere on Bermuda Street like the Q Super Centre, previously the 721 and 722 not stopping at the Pimpama shops, etc).
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I mean, if we’re talking about missing stops I think a more glaring one is the 768 passing straight past the Tugun Satellite Hospital Health Centre without a single stopping point close nearby.
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Are the new Gold Coast stations built to equip 9 car trains?
Not right off the bat, but they have been designed to be capable of extension to 9 car without a substantial rework irrc.
For instance, Hope Island only as a single entrance on the southern end. The northern end only has a set of simple evacuation staircases. If they had constructed an entrance on both ends of the platform, extending the station would have required demolishing at least one of them.
Keep in mind that there is no room between the platform and the Coomera connector to have an entrance on the eastern side of the platform.
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All the existing stations would be convertible as well by extending one or both ends. The 3 new ones will just be easier (likewise I expect Kuraby to Beenleigh inclusive once LGCFR is done).
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Passed through Hope Island on my way to Brisbane and the thing that caught my attention the most is how elegant everything is. It’s quite the pleasant place to wait for a train.
Pimpama in comparison feels utterly cheap and tacky. Like, badly so.
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I don’t think Pimpama is tacky, but it was obviously a station that was built to a budget - it comes across as much more in keeping with the Beenleigh Line Stations rebuilds, and Merrimac Station is likely to be similar to it as well.
Hope Island is the exception, because it wasn’t designed by the same people who designed the rest of the CRR stations, it was designed and built by the Acciona Georgiou Joint Venture (AGJV), who are building the neighbouring Coomera Connector. That is why it is notably different in design.
With Acciona also being a part of the LGC Rail Alliance working on LGCFR, it’s possible that those stations will have a closer built appearance to Hope Island.
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Went to hope island today and i agree. It’s a very nice station. Keep in kind there is nothing of real interest anywhere nearby, but the station itself is very pleasant and well designed
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For some reason, TransLink still hasn’t updated the maps section of the website with the new post Hope Island station network and the map of Hope Island station itself.
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