RAILWAY enthusiasts will celebrate 150 years of WA rail this year and the Leschenault Lady will be back in steam for festivities at Boyanup on Sunday, August 22.
The little 42-tonne engine is arguably WA's most iconic locomotive and a celebrity in its own right, appearing at a commemorative event to welcome the first Indian Pacific train into Perth in 1970 and the Centenary of WA Government Railways in Geraldton in 1979.
The loco has appeared in several documentaries and television feature films and was used in filming Albert Facey's 'A Fortunate Life' when it was painted green instead of its usual black livery.
For steam train lovers who mourned the destruction of the Yarloop Steam Workshops in the 2016 fire, the celebration will undoubtedly rekindle memories of losing the large and comprehensive collection of rail and timber industry memorabilia.
Hopefully, it also will galvanise efforts to preserve and develop one of the South West's best kept secrets - the South West Rail and Heritage Centre (SWR&HC) at Boyanup.
This bustling leafy green railway precinct has a wealth of railway stories that connect a big portion of the South West and tucked away in sheds are numerous railway carriages and locomotives.
It is also the home to the Boyanup Foundation Blacksmiths, Capel Men's Shed, Preston River Machinery Restoration Group and Model Railway Society.
The groups meet on set days on a weekly basis then on the fourth Sunday of every month the entire precinct is open to the public to wander through and revisit the port city of Bunbury's forgotten history, as well as the more recent story of Boyanup's railway and agricultural centre.
It all started with the locomotive G233 that was later named Leschenault Lady.
Built in 1898 in Gawler, South Australia, G233 spent much of its early working life (1909-1935) on the Hopetoun to Ravensthorpe railway before being sent to Bunbury in 1943 as one of two shunting locos on the jetty, loading grain ships.
Heritage centre member Don Brett remembers seeing the engine on the rickety wooden jetty that had a tendency to shake and sway when the carriages passed over it.
Times started changing in 1968 when modern diesel trains were introduced and WA Government Railways began collecting old carriages from around the South West to be scrapped.
In Bunbury, Tourist Bureau manager George Baxter successfully lobbied to keep some for tourism and volunteers rallied to refurbish six cars for operation.
Matching grants from the State government and the Australian Tourism Commission in 1973 funded a general overhaul of G233 and as a result of a widely publicised competition to find a name she emerged as the Leschenault Lady.
At that time the main Bunbury railway station, shunting yards, round house and goods sheds were sprawled along the foreshore of Koombana Bay and it wasn't until rationalisation in the 1980s that work started on a long-term plan to redevelop the area into the city it is today.
The only remaining building is the railway station that serves as a tourist information centre and it is hard to believe the Bunbury entertainment centre and cinema roughly stand where the huge round house use to be.
The demolition of the goods shed and round house left the vintage train without a home but a Commonwealth Employment Program project relocated the two buildings, piece by piece, to railway land at Boyanup.
In hindsight it was a great pity only one portion of the round house with its massive jarrah structural timbers was rebuilt.
Never the less this development gave the vintage train a home and in 1985 a museum, run by volunteers, was developed on the new site.
The group also acquired a second loco of the same class that was later named Koombana Queen, which eventually became the engine for the Hotham Valley Railway and is still on display at Pinjarra.
On days the Leschenault Lady was stoked up, she carried passengers to outings such as the Donnybrook Apple Festival and the Yarloop Vintage Rail days and also spent a year in service at Dwellingup for the Hotham Valley Railway.
It would be nice to say that was the end of the struggle, but seven years later in 1992 the Leschenault Railway Preservation Society, made up of a handful of volunteers who maintained the museum and its collection, could not continue and decided to close with its land lease and placed assets with Australian Railway Historical Society Western Australian division now known as Rail Heritage WA (RHWA).
While in the hands of the RHWA, the Leschenault Lady was overhauled at the former Midland workshops and with no work for her in the South West, she was sent on loan to work the Golden Mile Loopline tourist railway in Boulder from 2001-2005.
The group's future took a happier turn when funding assistance was received from the South West Development Commission and the Shire of Capel and the SWR&HC members reopened the museum in 2013.
SWR&HC secretary Debbie Pickston, who lived in the small timber town of Wellington Mills, recalls countryside around the port city criss-crossed by numerous rail lines leading to timber towns and settlements but only a few remnant sections remain today.
The last working wood chip line which ran from Diamond Mill near Manjimup to Bunbury port closed 15 years ago.
Since then, the rail line network has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer serviceable and the group is working to gain a section of disused track from Boyanup to Elgin to restore for its own use.
After taking control again they decided the Leschenault Lady should be restored to steaming condition and the first step was taken in 2015 when the boiler was removed and sent to Cutts Engineering in Manjimup for specialist work.
This included replacement of the boiler stays and ashpan, as well as a new smoke box.
During the lengthy time the boiler was away volunteers worked on the underframe and generous local business Piacentini & Sons undertook off-site restoration of the loco's coal tender and the finished tender, in gleaming condition, was returned to the precinct in January.
The new boiler passed its cold-water pressure test in December and volunteers are working on the final tasks to refit components such as the headlight, fireguard, pipework and other boiler mountings that have been cleaned and prepared for sandblasting by the Piacentini team.
Once everything is refitted, the loco will undergo its final steam test under supervision of a qualified boiler inspector.
For the group the target of having the Leschenault Lady back in steam as part of WA's 150th Anniversary of rail has been an ambitious one that has stretched over many years.
While the Lady is the centrepiece of the museum, there is other vintage rolling stock of great heritage value and one fully restored carriage will be on display in August.
Much of the work on the locomotives is carried out by qualified service men but restoring the carriages is one task members undertake.
Local man Garry Moore is a relative newcomer to the group, having only arrived four years ago and volunteered to help group stalwart John Budd, who has spent the best part of a decade methodically putting together the stripped-out interior of passenger car ACM 391.
The carriage had been the victim of a stalled restoration with the interior of the car completely dismantled and the various fittings strewn around the shed without being marked or kept together.
When John reached 80 years of age, he decided put away his tools and slow down and Garry has continued on to finish the paint work and complete the last of the assembly.
The carriage has been restored to 100 percent original condition and is typical of those used on the shorter country rail lines such as the route from Perth to Geraldton.
The 18.5-metre-long timber carriage is configured as a series of seven 'dog box' compartments, each carrying six passengers with each compartment having its own toilet.
The second-class compartments were located over the wheels, meaning a rougher ride, and didn't have the fine jarrah fittings or the black and white photographic display above the seats found in first-class.
Interestingly, the carriage ended its days as a suburban train when passenger services on country lines were replaced with buses and eventually all vintage train carriages were donated to RHWA by Westrail.
The group has plenty of other carriages awaiting a good overhaul including three ex-Bunbury to Perth Australind train carriages circa 1950.
The aluminium saloon carriage and dining car are in surprisingly good condition with gleaming chrome work offset by bright blue and white vinyl seats that will rekindle memories for a later generation of train enthusiasts.
The SWR&HC group sees a bright future and is hoping government funds will help to restore one major piece of infrastructure, the old goods shed, that houses much of the rollingstock and is in a precarious state of repair.
Hopefully, the sesquicentenary will be a time to reassess the value of WA's railway history and give it a page in Australia's great train journeys.
Volunteers, particularly those from the local region, are welcomed and there is a suitable task for everyone to do.
