7¼" gauge in the garden - Photo galleries - Castledare Miniature Railway, Perth

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Castledare Miniature Railway, Perth - 5" & 7¼" gauge

Australian Association of Live Steamers convention, Easter 2009

Visit the official website at: www.castledare.com.au

Each year over the Easter Weekend the AALS has a convention at one of the member clubs’ tracks and in 2009 it was the turn of Castledare in Perth, Western Australia. John Bremner, Alan Ure and myself made plans to attend and headed off to the airport for a long weekend. New Zealand may be next door to Australia but Aussie is huge. To put it in to perspective, it is about the same flight time as London to New York.

It turned out that we weren’t the only Kiwis on the plane as there were representatives of the Hamilton club (the three of us), Manukau (Auckland), Havelock North, Thames and Whangarei. All up 17 Kiwis made the trip across the Tasman. There were representatives from as far as Queensland and Tasmania, two from South Africans and one guy from the UK.

A shipping company had been engaged to transport locos from all over Australia and on the Friday and Saturday a steady procession of packing cases were being unloaded. Barry and Michael Greiger from Adelaide loaded their Victorian Railways S-class petrol-electric on to their trailer, drove to the station and came motor-rail on the Indian-Pacific (two nights on the train). They weren’t alone, there were other live steamers on the train and there were also quite a few who had driven cross country – Sydney to Perth is close on 4000km. All up there were about 250 registrations over the weekend and 75 visiting locos. Apparently they get more attendees at eastern conventions as people don’t have to travel so far.

The convention didn’t start in earnest until Friday but we went along on Thursday to get our bearings and also check out when the various activities were on. The railway gets a lot of support from the local council and on Thursday evening we attended a civic reception hosted by the mayor of Cannington (the suburb of Perth where the track is located). To my British mind “civic reception” conjures images of a shirt and tie, but this is Australia and we went along in shorts and T-shirts and were not out of place.

There are a number of other railway-themed interests around Perth including the two foot gauge Bennett Brook Railway around Whiteman Park and the Western Australian Railway Museum. Most of the other miniature railways in the area (i.e. within a day’s drive) were also open in the week following Easter weekend but we didn’t get time to visit them as it literally was a flying-visit. Unfortunately the Bennett Brook Railway wasn’t allowed to run steam that weekend due to the high fire risk, and steam locos at Castledare had to run with spark-arrestors for the same reason.

As well as the AGM of the AALS there was a meeting of the boiler committee. The existing steel boiler code has been brought up to date with regards to any relevant standards (DIN, ISO, etc.) though it hasn’t changed a great deal otherwise, but a new standard for duplex steel boilers has been added. This had previously been described as stainless-steel however that is not technically accurate. The purpose of this additional standard (which is still in draft) is: “To investigate the use of UNS S31803 Duplex Steel for boilers covered by the existing boiler code” and “To set quality welding procedures”. Metallurgists from Sandvik and the University of New South Wales have been consulted during the preparation of this draft document. Though still being refined, this new standard should be ready by the middle of the year.

During the AGM Barry Glover, long-time president of the AALS stood down. Barry had been to 47 consecutive AALS conventions.

The track at Castledare is around 5km long and winds its way through a marshy area alongside the Canning River. The dirt had been wheeled in by hand in barrows and dumped to form the trackbed. The club had people who were on the Work for the Dole scheme helping; I hate to think how many thousands of tons of dirt and rock were dumped in to the marsh to form the trackbed. The railway now provides access to the area and visitors can not only enjoy the ride but the sights of the marsh too. It is not a wise idea to walk the track through this area as it is also the natural environment for Tiger Snakes and they don’t like visitors, so the railway makes for easy and safe access.

The mayor returned on Saturday to perform an official opening of the convention and after a short speech a procession of trains ran round the railway with the official train of invited guests being pulled by Castledare’s club-owned steam loco Dennis P. Moore. Built by a former member the club bought it from him when he became too old to operate and care for it.

The railway was not open to the public over the weekend and only members of affiliated clubs who registered were allowed to attend. Whether this had anything to do with it or not I am not sure but there were several young children driving (always supervised) over the weekend. As the hobby tends to be the reserve of the more mature generations it was good to see children involved and obviously having a good time. There was also a female member there from the Altona Club in Melbourne with her two children and she spent a good portion of the weekend driving a rather nice 0-4-0 with one of her kids sitting on her knee.

Trains were running from early morning until well after dark and it was quite eerie to be travelling through the marsh in the dark with only the light of the moon and the loco’s headlight lighting the way.

To my British-eyes it was good to see such a variety of different locos. The only British-outline loco I saw was a very nice quarry Hunslet (one of my favourite classes of locos), all others being freelance or Aussie prototypes. There was a huge variety of locos ranging in size from an 0-2-2 (similar to an INVICTA or ROCKET) up to Richard Stuart’s ride-in Garratt.

Each evening the club provided a meal in the marquee for visitors and this was a great time to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. I don’t know how many of you remember Victor’s on the Pentonville Road in London, but back in the 1970s one of the staff was David Burnman. He left in 1983 and I had not seen him since but he was visiting his son in Perth and came along to the convention (the sole UK representative). Never in a thousand years would I have expected to bump in to someone from Victor’s on the other side of the world.

My highlights of the weekend would have to be:

A might-have-been South African Railways 2-10-4 – which I initially mistook for the Red Devil. This never even broke in to a sweat no matter how many passengers there were behind it. Remember, being a 3’ 6” gauge prototype it makes for one big loco in 7¼” gauge.

A Victorian Railways Y-class Bo-Bo (from the Diamond Valley Railway in Melbourne). This was powered by a Datsun 120Y engine driving an aircraft generator. Not only did it look great but it also sounded the part too. They had also shipped two superb bogie hoppers which rode like a Rolls Royce and looked superb whether loaded or empty.

It was interesting to finally see Richard Stuart’s Garratt in the flesh (metal?). This uses some rather unconventional ideas which you’d best read about yourself (see website link below) but his first run was cut short when he got a flat battery! Yes, this is a steam loco. I have pondered building a ride-in Garratt myself but having seen Stuart’s I know that I will stick to a more conventional approach - if I do go ahead.

Harvey Dart from the Penwood Railroad (Jaspers Brush in New South Wales) allowed us to drive his diesel shunter whenever we liked over the weekend. Though a battery-electric it had an integral sound system that would burble away quite happily even when sitting doing nothing. Harvey indulged me and allowed me to sit backwards on his passenger car taking photos whilst we were pursued around the track by Don Rowley (from the Castledare club) and his lovely Western Australia Govt Railway 4-6-0 (somewhat reminiscent of a WWI 60cm gauge Hunslet 4-6-0).

Perth was enjoying (?) some unseasonably hot weather over Easter and most days it was around 35 degrees. It is a dry heat but even so, when you come out of an air-conditioned room you practically collapse on your knees. Still, next year it is the turn of Brisbane in Queensland to host the convention - but I doubt that’ll be much cooler!

I'd like to thank everyone at Castledare for making us feel so welcome; they really did make it a memorable event for us all. It is a great track and I look forward to visiting it again.