The Midland Railway Company of Western Australia A Class Steam Locomotives

The seventy years from 1894 to 1964 saw the existence of the longest privately-owned common carrier railway in Australia, the Midland Railway Company of Western Australia (MRWA), which had its head office (London) and source of finance in the United Kingdom. Built to tap the rich farmlands of the Midlands district of WA, this 3'6" gauge line ran 227 miles (446km) north from Midland, an outer, eastern suburb of Perth, to Walkaway, some 18 miles (30km) south east of Geraldton.

Its principal traffic was wheat and other agricultural products, destined to be shipped out from the ports of Fremantle and Geraldton. Curiously, and due, no doubt, to now unexplainable government policy, MRWA locomotives were not permitted to run on Western Australia Government Railways (WAGR) tracks. As a result, all goods wagons for destinations beyond Midland or Walkaway were attached to WAGR trains at those locations for transit to their ultimate destinations. Passenger trains ran through from Perth to Geraldton, but with locomotive changes between systems at Midland and Walkaway.

In spite of this extraordinary inefficiency, the MRWA route between Perth and Geraldton was considerably shorter than the competing WAGR route through Wongan Hills and Mullewa, although the government system did their