Workshops Rail Museum

About

The Queensland Museum Rail Workshops (formerly the Workshops Rail Museum) is a railway museum in Ipswich, Queensland, located within the Queensland Rail owned North Ipswich Railway Workshops and tells the story of more than 150 years of railways in Queensland. Exhibits are spread out across a number of the complex's original buildings housing a collection of historic steam and diesel locomotives and other rolling stock that operated on Queensland Railways, as well as general interest exhibits and ones tailored specifically for children. The museum, which opened in 2002, is part of the Queensland Museum network, and highlights include the oldest working locomotive in Australia and the largest model railway in Queensland. The Workshops were closed until further notice, following a 26 October 2025 severe hailstorm.

Main article: North Ipswich Railway Workshops Queensland's first railway line, opened on 31 July 1865, ran between Ipswich and Grandchester, approximately 35 km (21.7 mi) to the town's west. To support the new line, which became known as the South and West Railway, construction of two workshop buildings at Ipswich commenced in 1863, about a kilometre (0.62 miles) south of the present facility on the northern banks of the Bremer River. The workshops were mostly intended for maintenance, but it was also where the state's first steam locomotives imported from the United Kingdom were assembled.

By the time the line to Grandchester opened, plans were already well underway to extend it over the Great Dividing Range to provide access to the agriculturally rich Darling Downs. Work commenced in November 1965 and opened to Gatton on 24 May 1866, to Helidon on 30 July and finally to Toowoomba on 12 April 1867. However, the Al0 Nelson locomotives imported from England struggled with the gradient and were limited to loads of no more than 58 tons between Murphy's Creek and Toowoomba. Larger B11-class locomotives built in Glasgow entered service in 1867 which could haul a load of 64 tons but these were later deemed too heavy for the rails by Chief Engineer H. C. Stanley, and although locomotives continued to be imported from the United Kingdom and the United States of America,, the workshops commenced plans to construct their own locomotives. [ citation needed ]

In 1877, the workshops built its first locomotive, a one-off modification of the A10 Neilson-class was known as the A10 'Ipswich'-class to differentiate it. However, in the same year a Select Committee for the Colony of Queensland recommended against local manufacture, and for the next two decades no new locomotives were built at the workshops, and instead rebuilt existing locomotives often with larger fireboxes and higher pressure boilers for greater power, as well as converting four of the eight original A10 Neilson 2-4-0 tender locomotives to 2-4-2 tank locomotives (which were redesignated as the 4D10 -class).

In 1908, the first of a new class, the B17 -class (originally known as the "mail engine" as it was tasked to haul mail trains) was built. Designed by Locomotive Engineer H. Horniblow (1883–1899 and 1904–1910), this was the first locally designed locomotive built at the workshops.

As Queensland's rail network grew in size, the need for a larger fleet of locomotives led to the North Ipswich Railway Workshops, as they came to be known, grew in size and function. [ citation needed ]

At its peak during World War II, The Workshops, as it is affectionately known, employed around 3,000 men and women, mostly from Ipswich and the surrounding areas, making it one of the state's largest employers of the time. Those employed included: [ citation needed ]

- riveters and welders. In its history, The Workshops constructed more than 200 steam locomotives and 13,000 carriages, and is the only Australian railway workshop that has been in continuous operation since the 1800s.

The workshops' original buildings were two prefabricated sheds imported from England. Over the decades, the workshops grew in size and function and larger, more permanent buildings were constructed over the subsequent decades, often highlighted by architectural style of that period. Some buildings have been repurposed, and are listed by their current purpose:

- 1880s : During the original expansion period five propose-built workshops were constructed: [ citation needed ]

- K Mill (1885), former Paint Shop / North Saw Mill / Wood Machine Shop

- Tarpaulin Shop (1886; extended c. 1901–3 } to connect to K Mill), former Machine Shop

- Wheel Shop (1885, extended 1923), former Wagon Shop

- Trimmers' and Electroplating Shop (1885), former Carriage Shop / Timber Store / Paint Shop

- Spring Shop (1887, extended 1924), former Smithy (Blacksmith) Shop / Foundry / Forge

- 1903–04 : Ten additional buildings were constructed to provide storage, power generation, and water storage and supply; these were: [ citation needed ]

- Blacksmith Shop (1903, extended 1922 and by 1946)

- Boiler Shop (1903, extended 1918, 1936 and 1944)

- Erecting and Machine Shop (1903, extended 1928 and 1938)

- Maintenance Carpenter's Shop (1903, extended 1927), former Pattern Shop