December 23, 1871
Operations began for the first railway in the present-day state of Western Australia (WA). At the time of this railway’s debut, WA was a British crown colony. The railway was a private one owned by West Australian (W.A.) Timber Company. This 4.3-mile (seven-kilometer) line ran between the localities of Yokanup (now known as Yoganup) and Lockeville in the South West region of WA. It was officially opened by Frederick Weld (1823-1891), who served as governor of WA from 1869 to 1875.
By 1887, the W.A. Timber Company was mired in financial difficulties. The following year, the company was liquidated and its assets – including the railway – were auctioned off in Melbourne.
One of the enduring legacies of the W.A. Timber Company’s pioneering but short-lived railway is the Ballaarat steam engine, a locomotive used for the line. The Ballaarat steam engine, which is featured in the accompanying photo taken in 2020, made history in its own right as the first three-foot, six-inch (1,067-millimeter) narrow gauge locomotive to be built in Australia. This locomotive can be seen today at the visitors center in the City of Busselton in WA.
Photo Credit: Calistemon (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Calistemon) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
For more information on Western Australia’s first railway, please check out https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/technology/industry/display/61257-ballarat-tramline- and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.A._Timber_Company
Additional information on the Ballaarat steam engine is available at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-12/ballarat-locomotive-historical-treasure/12541196 and http://media.lrrsa.org.au/capo224/Light_Railways_224.pdf
Transportation History 
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