The Workshops

For 90 years, the Government Railway Workshops at Midland were the largest industrial workshops in Western Australia, training tradesmen to build and repair locomotive engines and rolling stock, and to maintain the State's railway network that was at the heart of its economic development. Midland-trained tradesmen entered trades and professions as diverse as marine engineering, house building, and lecturing in colleges. Widespread community outrage greeted the government's decision to close the Workshops, but numerous campaigns to prevent the closure were fruitless, and the gates finally shut in March 1994. The Workshops records the history of this important industrial facility, and is the product of two grant-funded history projects that involved more than 200 hours of interviewing past employees, as well as collecting and archiving Workshops documents and photographs of significant note. The book was researched and written by experts in railway, labor, social, and engineering history. It gives voice to, and preserves, the experiences and skills of the many Workshops employees whose contributions to the fabric of Western Australia might otherwise have been lost forever.