Travel Australia

Classic Railway Stations: Merredin, Western Australia

The railway line determined the final location of Merredin in 1893 and the station, built in 1895, was one of the first on the eastern railway. The first resident officer, Mr H.J. Cooper, described it as "as open shed 12 x 18 feet on a platform about 200 feet long ... (with) no shelter of any description.". He and his family 'resided' in a canvas tent. Merredin's status as a rail and commercial centre was secured when the locomotive depot at Southern Cross was shifted to Merredin in 1904. With branch lines serving both northern and southern wheatbelt areas, Merredin opened as a booking station in 1905.



The station expanded to include the cellar (1906), the signal box housing 95 levers (1913), waiting rooms with a Romanesque arch (1917) and parcels office and refreshment rooms (1923). The latter were built with salmon tinted Coolgardie bricks salvaged from the Golden Gate, Hannan Street and Kallaroo Stations after the heyday of the goldrush. The railway station was converted into a museum by the Merredin Museum and Historical Society after a new station was built in 1968. The museum opened in 1978. The building group is an important collection of early railway structures and also has a social value arising from the community effort to create and operate the museum.



The station's building group comprises four buildings, end to end, on an island platform. Entry to the Merredin Railway Museum, which is housed in the station building, is from the eastern end into what was originally the parcels office (1923), later the main station building. The next building is the elevated signal box (1913), followed by a building of toilets and waiting rooms (1917) and finally refreshment rooms (1923), built in the same style as the parcels office, with a cellar (1906) used for storage of perishables and cool drinks.



The station building is a near-perfect re-creation of the old station with just about every piece of railway memorabilia possible. It has a working windmill, a beautifully preserved 1897 G117 steam engine, and the station still has the old scales and cream cans. It is one of the finest regional railway museums in Australia. There is a plaque by the museum entrance stating that renovation work carried out by the Merredin Historical Society was funded by the Department of Education Employment and Training, July 1993 - January 1994, under a local employment program.

Merredin is a major regional centre for the surrounding central agricultural district. It is promoted as the Garden Town of the Wheatbelt. The town's Grain Transfer Terminal, with its capacity of 220,000 tonnes, is the largest horizontal storage facility in the southern hemisphere.