It has been my intention for some time to provide short stories of the objects in the museum that is the Yarloop Workshops.
I’ve chosen to initially introduce you to our locomotive (railway engine), a G Class locomotive number 176. This engine has nothing to do with the history of the Workshops but it appears in our logo, on posters and in almost everyone’s photos of the Workshops. Locomotives like this, however, were a part of the history of the place. Several were stationed there in the two Running Sheds on the site. These were the places where the locomotives were stored overnight, maintained and fired up early each morning.
The Millars’ Timber Company had an extensive railway system and once had more than 40 locomotives operating throughout the WA forest; 15 of these were like the 176. The Workshops had the capacity to completely refit railway engines such as the 176, starting with wooden moulds of parts and turning out complete steel components. Boilers were also made for refits of the engines. Most of Millars’ engines were worked on at the Yarloop Workshops.
Number 176 was built in South Australia in 1898 by G Martin & Co Ltd of Gawler and bought by the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) in 1899 that classified it as G Class. Millars’ bought the first of these into the State in 1889 for the building of the Great Southern Railway. It was then purchased by the WAGR. They then purchased 72 of them. These engines served until the 1970s when steam railway engines ceased to be used. Light but powerful narrow-gauge engines, they served well throughout the State’s once extensive railway system.
In 1942 the 176 was purchased by the timber company, Bunning Bros., and in 1955 given a complete overhaul by their own Engineering Works in Manjimup that included the fitting of the more powerful boiler.
In 1956 it operated at the Yornup and Donnelly Mills and was housed in the 8-year-old Donnelly Mill’s new Running Shed. It was used to haul logs and cut timber from the Donnelly Mill to the Yornup Mill and the Yornup Government Railway siding. It operated until 1967.
By the late 1960s it could be seen painted and on display outside Bunning’s Head Office at Balcatta before it was donated in the late 1990s to the Yarloop Workshops where it was on display in the Main Building and in the original Workshops’ Running Shed.[1]
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[1] From ‘The Phoenix Rises Very Slowly’ Part 6, by Allan Ward