For as long as there have been generations of my family catching the Carlingford line, there have been promises – from Federal and state governments - to improve this now little-used arm of the Sydney train network. The last was made just days before the 2010 Federal election - coincidence? Now the Gillard government's quiet shelving of $2 billion earmarked for the Parramatta-Epping line is the latest in the long line of broken promises.

Since 1888, when the steam train first plied its way between Clyde and Carlingford, successive government have failed to do anything but promise to do something about extending this train line to Parramatta or Epping. So it continues to end in a deadend at Carlingford, and is likely to remain so until at least 2019 now.

For decades my family lived without a car in this area, but that's impossible now. My mother and her sister caught the train from Dundas to primary school at Rosehill, and then onto Clyde to change for the train to their jobs in the city. To go the high school in Parramatta, only a few kilometres journey by car, they had to catch the train to Clyde, change trains, and get on a western line train to Parramatta, a ridiculously convoluted journey which you still need to do today if you want to get to Parramatta by train from this part of Sydney.

They laughed at ladies dressed in white gloves and hats on their way to the Rosehill races who would complain how the train ruined their hairdos when it let out an enormous shot of steam. Lifelong friendships were formed on this train ride into the city. I met one of my best friends waiting for the train on the Dundas platform.

The steam train was replaced by the old red-rattler trains which operated until as recently as 1993, around the time of the train line's extension again became a promise from the NSW government. But soon it became a ghost train: the staff was cut out at stations, replaced by ticket machines, services were constantly cancelled and vandalism became rife. The N and S letters on the Dundas train station sign, were graffitied out, which amused locals endlessly as they alighted for years at a sign which read DU DA.