OK, does anyone here remember how the central train station in Salzburg, Austria, was organized in the early 1980s? It had a big renovation in 2014, and it's about impossible to find pictures online of what it looked like before. What I'm looking for is a rough idea of the kind of space one would move through between the time one would step off the train, until one sat down in a largish, reasonably anonymous restaurant. Not a fast food place. Too small. But was there a major station cafeteria or something at that time? I read on Wikipedia about there being a "marble hall," demolished for the 2014 reno, that was part of a restaurant. That sounds promising, but where was it? What I'm looking for is on the order of "She led them [up/down?] an [escalator/set of stairs?] and through a [high/low/narrow/wide?] [concourse/underpass/whatever?] and finally to the entrance of [said restaurant]." Or maybe it was on the same level as the tracks? That's what I need to find out. Thanks! I can afford to be a little creative, but I don't want those in the know to pick holes.
I found you a short youtube video of the central station in 1988. It doesn’t show a cafeteria as such, but a couple small food stands and one restaurant. There is a lower level, but the video doesn’t venture down.
Oh, this is good! My YouTube search didn't come up with this one, though it should have. That restaurant I see on track level would be perfect. I'll see if I can get any info on what it looked like inside. Anybody here with experience on it? I notice there's no train shed, like I got used to seeing in major European cities. The Zurich to Wien train featured in the video runs the route my characters would be taking, so this is where they'd arrive. So no glass roof over the tracks. I guess that came in 2014. Thank you! EDIT--- Watching it again, I see this is the westbound side. They'd be coming in the eastbound side, across the way. Meaning, to get to the restaurant they'd take the stairs down and pass through a dingy (according to some other descriptions I've read) underpass and up again. I doubt they'd be as nonchalant as that one dude who just strolled across the tracks!
Hee! Though I think I'm still wrong about the old set up. The building with the restaurant may be in the middle of one wide platform with a canopy over it, and one simply crossed the platform to get to the trains travelling in the other direction. I think so because the online sources (yeah, Salzburg Info) say the old Hauptbahnhof had an "island platform." There definitely were underpasses, but I'm thinking you didn't have to use one to access this restaurant. I can see two separate entrances (or entrance-exits?) to it on the film. It stands to reason there would be an entrance on each side, to attract travellers going both ways. I also think, judging from the look of them, that the building across the tracks that dude was hiking across served the freight trains.
