Cataclysmic fire destroyed the Yarloop Workshops and other town buildings that dated back to the beginning of the 20th Century.
The Workshops buildings, however, contained many items made of steel. Indeed, intense heat was a part of much of what originally happened in the Workshops. Some of these items were damaged by the fireball and resulting conflagration, and some disappeared or were destroyed in the Government sponsored clean-up, but much still remains.
Housed in one of the railway-engine running sheds was a unique collection of 19th and 20th Century stationary steam engines. This amazing collection of stationary steam engines typified those machines that powered the industrial revolution. These, being largely steel, survived relatively intact.
It took only one of those machines to power an entire factory or a sawmill and its supporting township. The Workshops themselves were powered by just one such engine driving an overhead central shaft some 40 or so metres long, from which drive belts descended to the many machines below.
The machines, together with blacksmith’s tools such as anvils, and leg vices, survived the inferno. Some of these machines were monstrous. Steam hammers and lathes of various kinds are evident in the pile of rusting objects. The wheel lathe, believed to be only one of two in Australia, that balanced the largest wheels of railway engines or the 22-foot (6.7 metre) lathes, that were used to turn out armaments during the World Wars are there to view. Steel parts of railway trucks and logging whims have also been recovered. Machines that were used to sharpen the essential mill saws were also salvaged. Then there is the Clyde diesel shunting engine and the steam railway engine that was built in the 1890s and spent most of its last working days at Bunnings’ Donnelly River Mill. These were all survivors of the Fire but are now in need of preservation from the elements.
The Yarloop Workshops Inc. has, with help from the Harvey Shire, attempted to preserve these treasures that date back to the early years of the Workshops, or were gathered from mill sites, in some cases purchased at considerable cost. Once the volunteers were given access to the site, they began the work of preservation. This small band of volunteers has worked for over a year to protect the stationary steam engines. They believe that these machines are restorable to the state they were in before the Fire, in many cases a working state.
Preservation continues but restoration can only begin when the machines and other items are properly housed. That day is eagerly anticipated.[1]
[1] From ‘The Phoenix Rises Very Slowly’ Part 2, by Allan Ward.