Please post a photo of you with the Castledare Railway Bridge.

BEGININGS OF CASTLEDARE RAILWAY

How it all started. 

During 1956‐1964 when I worked at Boans Furniture Factory in East Perth, one of my work mates came to me and told me about a 3½” gauge railway in Rossmoyne near the river.  This railway happened to belong to a man named Ernie Nelson. After a few years he donated his 3½” railway to the Model Engineers Club and placed it around a pond at Clontarf Boy’s Home. I heard about the railway and this is where I met Keith Watson, Bob Moss and Ken Foster.  They were running 3½” gauge steam engines.  I was completely wrapped in these little engines, and I discovered that Keith Watson was building a 7¼” gauge locomotive which became known as “Nellie”.   This inspired me to the point that I too must have a 7¼” gauge locomotive, so off I went and built a small petrol powered engine. It drove the six rear wheels and the six front wheels were free running, known as a co‐co arrangement. The year was 1962 and the engine became named as The Commonwealth Diesel. After completing the locomotive, I made some track out of 5/8” x 5/8” steel bar for the rail line.  I also had to work out the minimum radius for the curves, make a workable point and a turntable all in 7¼” gauge for the trains to run on. This had not been done before in W.A.  This locomotive was run at Castledare on the first piece of track which was laid down for a Field Day in 1963. When I completed the track I went around to Keith’s place in Rossmoyne and told him that I had just completed a 7¼” gauge track at my home in Canning Vale.  His reply was “You Bugger you kept that quiet”.  He told me he would like to take Nellie for a run to see how she performed, and it was a great success. We both enjoyed running our trains at night and daytime, and the year was 1962. Keith said he would like to build a railway somewhere to run for the public and give joy rides, so he went to the Castledare Boys Home.  The answer came back “no” until he mentioned the magic words; ”You can make money out of this by us giving the public train rides”. The response was “When can you start?”  We got to work and dug up some really odd bits of track measuring 80‐100ft if I remember correctly.  The railway was poor and we ended up more times off the track than on it. I think we made about $6‐00 for the whole day. This is my story of the beginning of Castledare Miniature Railway.

By Kevin Perry Founder Member

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