STOP PRESS | Upgrades to Orange Railway Station can't ignore areas's heritage value

One of the ambitious suggestions is to build a lift on either side of the railway pedestrian overbridge but how they'll do that is anybody's guess.

The 1910 bridge along with all the other railway buildings is heritage listed and was built with composite cast iron posts and brown brick piers, riveted iron beams and cast iron railing.

Extended in 1938 the new section was the first welded truss bridge in the railway system while the original part is recorded as the oldest surviving footbridge in NSW and the only example of its type.

So how can you add lifts without wrecking its heritage value?

Other plans for the railway include those long strips of railway land along Endsleigh Avenue and Peisley Street that developers would love to get their hands on likely becoming parking for camper vans or developed for student or short stay accommodation.

Large rail sheds could provide indoor play or recreational facilities like climbing walls or skate parks.

There's already a piece of rail land behind Endsleigh Avenue businesses and adjoining the back of the Victoria Hotel that's been sold and a motel will go there.

A shed that once housed the Silver City Comet is leased and full of garden supplies.

And there's plans for accommodation on the old Audi site on the corner of Endsleigh Avenue and Summer Street while the former DPI building could be used for the same, offices or health consulting rooms.

So there's lots of activity on the drawing board but the railway land should be retained at all costs for any future rail infrastructure. Orange Rail Action Group agrees.

To sell it off would be near-sighted.

And the lifts?

The traffic controls in Orange aren't doing drivers any favours with cars burning up an average 1.6 litres of petrol a week while stopped with engines idling at traffic lights and intersections.

This equates to about 84 litres a year which at present prices will cost you around $98 and your car has been standing still all the time.

The experts say you should turn off your engine if the wait is longer than 15 seconds because idling after that uses more fuel and produces more CO2, which is greenhouse gas.

An hour's idling burns nearly 1.6 litres of fuel and that's about what the average Orange driver does in a week by five to 10 minutes a day.

Theoretically if the 34,745 licence holders in Orange cut idling time by only three minutes a day for a year it would collectively save around one million litres of fuel, or $1.2 million.

So your own emissions are controllable and reducible even though the traffic lights and the way they're set might be against you.

A bus driver has to explain to his boss why he was 10 minutes late on his run.

'I was stuck behind a big truck,' he says.

'But yesterday you were 10 minutes early,' his boss says.

"Yes,' says the driver. 'But yesterday I was stuck behind a Ferrari.'