This was officially opened in March 2004, after months of work by Nana Lye and a small team of dedicated volunteers. All the rooms were stripped back to the basics and the restoration process was started.
The committee was aware that the Loopline Railway was to be out of operation for a while, and this was seen as a way to keep interest in the Loopline alive.
Local people have donated most of the exhibits and some are on loan from the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society, which is now in the Old Power House adjacent to the Boulder City Station.

Room 1 - Railway comes to the Goldfields: In the early 1900’s, very few cars were on the Goldfields. Bicycles, horse & carts, and trains formed the main means of transport for families miners and freight. The only alternative means was to walk. The train services consisted of the East-West national line and the Loopline, which covered most areas of Kalgoorlie and Boulder.
The Loopline was opened in 1897 and was originally planned as an ore tramway, even before the line reached Kalgoorlie, but with the Goldfields so busy and more people arriving every day, this railway was their main transport to work.
A diesel rail coach, nicknamed the “Tin Hare” operated for ten years, after the steam engines ceased running in 1922, but that also ceased due to lack of passengers.

Room 2 - Tramways: The beginning of the decline of the Loopline began with the first trams on the Goldfields. In early 1903, an electronic tram was brought out from America, despite several years of protest from the public as it felt that the tramway would duplicate the Loopline, therefore making it obsolete. Despite these protests, the trams went ahead, although the plans for the track layout were changed so as to cover different areas of Kalgoorlie and Boulder.
The tram service ran for almost fifty years, before being superseded by the motor car. Today, no tracks remain to show where the trams once ran.

Room 3 - Tourist Loopline: In 1978 two Western Mining employees, Bryan Smith and Mike Wheeler, railway enthusiasts, decided to have one last run on the Loopline before it disappeared. They used a Wickham Rail Car and a weekend tourist run seemed viable.
In 1982 the Loopline commenced fulltime operations and continued until January 2004 when it was necessary for KCGM to claim the track to expand the Superpit operations.
It is now planned to relocate the track from Boulder to Kalgoorlie. KCGM gave the Golden Mile Loopline Railway Society a sizeable donation and is assisting with the change over. How ever, it will take some time before trains will once more be running on the line.
The Loopline Tourist Railway operated a variety of ex-WA Government Railways coaching stock and locomotives. Included was a dining car, purchased from Westrail, which was restored by the Loopline society.
In original service it was first used on the narrow-gauge Western Service between Kalgoorlie and Perth. It later went to the Albany Express, when the Perth-Kalgoorlie main line was converted to standard gauge, and was finally withdrawn from service in 1978. After purchase it sat at the Boulder City Station for many years as a static refreshment service, but in early 1993 it was restored to mobile condition and has become part of the train
Still in the railway's possession is the item the Loopline Tourist Railway first started operations with - a Wickham Rail Inspection Car commissioned in 1960, built by D. Wickham and Co of Ware, Herts, England.

Room 4 - Loopline Beginning: Mine managers fought for a more direct route to their workings, whilst merchants and the people of Boulder felt they deserved priority. In the end the mines won, and in 1897 a line was laid from Golden Gate to Kamballie and on to Lakeview, forming the Inner Loop or Circle to the railway. Kamballie was an important junction, where one of the woodlines branched off to Lakeside, and was once the third largest station on the Boulder section of railway.
The trains carried thousands of miners daily to and from the Boulder mines and lease, each man carrying a change of clothes under one arm, his crib box swinging in his hand.

Room 5 - Woodlines: The loopline linked the wood “tram lines” (rails on which wood was carted on trolleys hauled by horses or small steam engines, or carried by camel teams), and the woodline terminus for shipment.
The main freight carried on the railway here, though, was timber for underground mine supports, as well as firewood for the various steam engines and water condensers. A network of timber railways ran out into the bush, where seven hundred men were housed in temporary camps, cutting ten thousand tonnes of wood per week and sending it in on light rail to the Loopline.
These settlements travelled with their railway, consisting of collapsible hessian walled houses, movable corrugated iron stores and a carriage for a school. The primitive conditions caused strike and labour shortages and the Woodline Companies would not have survived without Southern European migrant labour. These people were willing to take the hardships and formed a large portion of the workforce.
Clear felling of timber by the timber companies reduced the forest around Kalgoorlie, and at their demise almost 30 million tons of wood was cut, from thirty thousand square miles of forest.

Room 6 - Model Train: This was donated by Boulder residents and restored to give the kids (big & little) something to play with. Nana’s father came out from Germany and spent countless hours putting the display together.

Back to Loopline Tourist Railway

Loopline Tourist Railway
Boulder Railway Station
Hamilton Street
PO Box 2024,
Boulder WA 6432

Phone/Fax: 08-90933055

mail@loopline.com.au