Katanning Miniature Railway
| The Katanning Miniature Railway complex is located adjacent to Katanning’s All Ages Adventure Playground at the main entrance to town. The miniature railway operates every second and fourth Sunday of the month from 11.00am – 4pm weather permitting. It also operates for special events subject to volunteer availability. Enclosed shoes are required while riding on the trains. |
Miniature Steam Locomotive
The Katanning Miniature Railway was established over 27 years ago by Len and Betty Toms. A governing committee was formed in 1995 and the club now has four operating trains including “Heidi” (steam train), “Bits ‘N’ Pieces” (diesel loco), “Blossom” (diesel loco) owned by M. Ball and its new train the “Kindy Express” (electric).
Len Toms sits in “Nuff Puff,” the steam engine he built. Len started the Katanning Miniature Railway over twenty years ago.
(Simon Brown – ABC Local)
The train station was the original Kendenup Railway Station that was transported and renovated by local service clubs in 1990. Over the years the Katanning Miniature Railway has benefited from many LotteryWest and FRRR grants to extend the tracks, build a workshop, fix the roof, purchase trains etc. The club is run by a volunteer base of approximately 12-14 people and it is always looking for new volunteers!
The electric train, called the “Kindy Express,” was purchased with money kindly donated by the Community Kindy Committee upon its cessation. This money was also utilised to purchase carriages, two sets of bogies, sleepers and steel for a new track and paint.
The Katanning Miniature Railway (KMR) was first started by Len Toms in 1998, 24 years ago, after he built a steam train called Nuff Puff. Len approached the Katanning Shire for land to build a 7 1/4 inch gauge track. It was decided to lay the track at the All Ages Playground. In 1990 the Kendenup railway station was brought by the Shire and placed next to the track and is now KMR’s tearooms and museum.
A small shed for the rolling stock was built. Until 1994, Len with his wife Betty and different people helping them, gave train rides on Sunday afternoons. In 1995 it was decided to form a Miniature Railway club to run the railway. Len Toms was first President and Julie Stock was Secretary/Treasurer. Nuff Puff gave rides for over 20 years being retired in February 2009 due to the boiler needing to be replaced. Len built both steam locomotives, Smokey and Nuff Puff.
Over the last 24 years many improvements have been made at KMR. It started in 2000 when it received a grant from the Centenary of Federation Committee and donations from local firms to extend its workshop area. On 25 March 2001, the new building was opened by the Honourable Hendy Cowan MLC.
HELP NEEDED
13 November, 2007
By Simon Brown
ABC Great Southern
The Katanning Miniature Railway has become a local institution, and will soon celebrate its twentieth birthday. However with few new volunteers joining, the railway’s future is uncertain.
The station platform is bustling. Young children clamour aboard the train carriages as a man busily shovels coal into the furnace of the steam engine. Finally everyone is seated. The train driver gives a long burst of the whistle, sending wafts of musty smelling steam across the platform. Slowly the train chugs away from the station and across the bridge, eventually disappearing among the trees.
It could be a scene from a Harry Potter novel – especially as someone seems to have cast a spell and shrunk the train.
Welcome to the Katanning Miniature Railway, where volunteers gather every second Sunday to take people for a ride in their scale model steam trains. The attraction has become an institution in the small West Australian town, and will soon celebrate its twentieth birthday. However with few new volunteers joining, the railway’s future is uncertain.
Len Toms opened the railway in 1988, having built it with some assistance from the Katanning Shire Council. He says it all started when he bought a new lathe.
“I got a lathe and I was keen on lathe work,” he says. “I was looking for something to make and I was in Perth one day and I happened to be introduced to Keith Watson who is a loco engineer up in Perth. Keith was in Kalgoorlie when he noticed a small train, so small in fact that you could look over the boiler. He was quite taken by it.”
“It was there for a number of years not being used,” says Len. “Eventually he got hold of it and took it to Perth and drew up blueprints. It was from these blueprints that Len built his first locomotive. He then approached the shire about building a small railway in the town’s park.”
“The lines and the two bridges were financed by the shire,” he says. In 1990 the shire helped out again by buying the Kendenup railway station building and placing it next to the track. Len and his wife Betty ran the railway for six years with help from local service clubs such as Apex and Rotary before officially forming Katanning Miniature Railway Inc. in 1995.
Current club president Tony Stock built the railway’s second steam engine. “I had a stroke and I needed something to do,” he says. “My father built a little three and a half inch gauge locomotive and he sort of got me going as a kid, and I thought to myself well I’ll build a train. It took me three and a half years to build,” says Tony. “It’s a one eighth scale model of Holmside, which is a train they used to use in England in Yorkshire, taking the coal trucks down to the main line for the freight trains.”
While the two locomotives are scale models, there is nothing fake about them. “They’re built like a real proper mainline loco,” says Len. “I’ve even had adults say to me ‘where’s the engine in it?’ and they don’t realise it’s a steam engine.”
Building the trains involves some intricate work. “The only thing that’s not had made is that dial gauge there,” says Tony, pointing to a tiny pressure gauge next to his train’s boiler door. “Everything else I’ve built myself.” While Tony is an engineer by trade, he says that “all of us can do the same sort of thing. It’s just patience and a good wife,” he says.
That “good wife” is Julie Stock, who is Secretary and Treasurer of the miniature railway club. She admits that it “takes quite a bit of organisation. Our men are involved a lot,” says Julie. “They come down every week on a Wednesday morning to have a busy bee to keep the track maintained and the grounds maintained. Then on Sundays when we run we need our men to work as guards and drivers. We have tearooms going and we have volunteer ladies help in the tearooms to serve tea and coffee,” says Julie. “We’re told that we’ve got a good Devonshire tea.”
This division of labour has kept the trains running for twenty years, but the club is starting to struggle. “Our members are getting older and their health isn’t as good and it’s getting harder and harder to keep going,” says Julie. She says finding new volunteers is hard for any organisation.
“Everybody’s busy and they haven’t got time but we really do need a few more people to help us,” she says. “We need some men to help on busy bees to help maintain the grounds and equipment. We need people to help on run days to train as guards and perhaps if they wish at a later date as drivers.”
Tony says that he and Len are keen to pass on their knowledge. “We’re quite prepared to teach them how to run these, how to work them, how to drive them,” he says. “If they want to build one, we’ll even give them a hand with that.”
Julie says she gains a lot of pleasure just “watching the children and the adults have fun.” She says the real magic happens when they run for seniors’ groups. “A lot of people say ‘oh the smell of the coal and the steam – it brings back a lot of memories’,” says Julie. “A lot of the senior people remember the days when steam trains were all the go and they get a lot of pleasure from it. They have more fun than the children,” she says.
Fifteen years on and that help is still desperately needed. If you would like a new hobby and would be prepared to help out at the miniature railway please contact the secretary, Julie Stock.
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