[4] Part of the Bradfield Plan, St James railway station was originally intended to be a major interchange with the Eastern Suburbs line[5] on Sydney's underground rail system.

One distinctive feature of the station is a neon sign from the late 1930s advertising Chateau Tanunda Brandy installed by Tucker, Lingard & Co.

[10] Completion of the City Circle loop did not occur until 30 years after St James station opened.

The above-ground viaduct and Circular Quay railway station were finally completed in 1956, allowing trains to make a single circuit through the city and return to the suburbs without having to terminate.

The signal box remained in use until 1990 with the occasional train continuing to terminate at St James to keep the siding tracks usable for emergencies and railway staff familiar with the procedures.

[10][15] The southern tunnels were modified during World War II to serve as a public air raid shelter.

[16] The bunker was located in what was intended to be the City Inner Tunnel, access to which was provided by a wooden staircase in a shaft leading upward to Shakespeare Place.

Busby's Bore was originally used to carry water from nearby swamps to the Hyde Park area, but was abandoned for that purpose in the 1890s after becoming contaminated by sewage.

In 2004 the idea of recycling the water from the bore received support from the executive director of the Botanical Gardens Trust, Tim Entwisle.

[19] Clean Up Australia partnered with a number of groups in the attempt to move the project forward, and in 2007 obtained funding to proceed.

According to this plan all storm water from Parliament House, the State Library and Sydney Hospital (all on Macquarie Street) would be drained into the tunnels, treated, and then pumped back to storage tanks at the surface for use in non-potable water systems, saving an estimated 17 megalitres (3.7×10^6 imp gal; 4.5×10^6 US gal) each year.

[17] In January 2008, the Minister for Transport John Watkins said he intended to ask RailCorp to begin a study to determine if the underground network of tunnels could be used for water storage.

According to one source, the ABC used this bell to simulate the sound of Big Ben for use in a TV series during the 1960s,[7] but that information has not been verified.

[5] The piece, titled "An UnRequited Place", was part of the Working in Public project created by ArtSpace Sydney, and was a combination of the physical sculpture, performance and audio broadcast.

[4] The underground platforms and concourse retain many original features and provide one of the most ornate station interiors in the NSW railway system.

Disused platforms demonstrate the grand plans of the 1930s railway network of Bradfield, while the air raid shelter areas in the southern tunnels are rare surviving elements of Sydney's World War II defences.

[4] This Wikipedia article contains material from St. James Railway Station group, entry number 1248 in the New South Wales State Heritage Register published by the State of New South Wales (Department of Planning and Environment) 2018 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 13 October 2018.