Meryla Siding was a stop between Moss Vale and Exeter on the single-track Great Southern Railway from Sydney that was built through the local district, opening to Goulburn in May 1869. A gatehouse was erected nearby to service a level crossing. This building is still in existence as a private residence in the locality, now known as Werai.
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At least four gatehouses existed from 1867 along the railway through the Wingecarribee district. They accommodated staff whose duty it was to open and close the level crossing gates to allow for the safe passage of alternately road and rail traffic. They were erected at locations in-between the main stations wherever an existing public road crossed the railway line. They were built in brick or sandstone mostly to a cruciform plan in the Gothic Revival style, in keeping with the styles favoured by railway chief John Whitton.
While most of the district's original railway station buildings remain in use today, the gatehouses lost their purpose due to changes in road usage and railway line upgrading.
There was once a cruciform-style, sandstone gatehouse at Braemar to the north of Mittagong. From 1867 it housed staff who protected road and rail users at a busy level crossing located where the Great Southern Railway crossed the Southern Road (now Old Hume Highway). The residence was demolished in 1918 to make way for an overbridge on Ferguson Ave adjacent to the Maltings, as part of railway duplication and deviation works. In 1963 the site was further impacted by improvements to the then Hume Highway, and the former level crossing and gatehouse were forgotten.
Railway records list a non-cruciform, brick gatehouse with pyramidal roof at Burradoo, situated where the railway crossed a track used by settlers living along the Wingecarribee River to the west. In the vicinity of the present-day level crossing, with its boom gates and signals, the remains of the gatehouse can be seen on private land.
An 1867 cruciform-style, sandstone gatehouse was built one kilometre south of Moss Vale Station at a level crossing on Yarrawa Road, an early track that linked Berrima and Nowra. After the crossing was closed in the 1970s the gatehouse, being unoccupied, fell into disrepair. It was sold, dismantled and lovingly rebuilt on Warks Hill Road, Kurrajong Heights, west of Sydney.
Another cruciform 1867 gatehouse existed for at least a decade at Jordans Crossing (later Bundanoon), built where the railway line crossed a settlers' track. Evidence of its existence includes an early photo and a newspaper description, however from the 1880s the gatehouse does not appear in photos of the station that was built near the level crossing.
All the above gatehouses serviced existing public crossings before becoming redundant, as did the cruciform-style, sandstone building at Meryla (now Werai). It no longer sits beside the rail line, which was deviated to the west, but remains as part of a farm residence, bearing witness to a very early chapter in our local history. From the 1820s a track linked Sutton Forest (the district's first private village) with Kangaroo Valley via Meryla Pass, proceeding directly across the Werai locality and becoming a busy vehicle and stock route. Today's Werai and Greenhills Roads are remnants of that track. When the railway was built through in the 1860s it had to cross the track, thus requiring a level crossing, installed near the Meryla Siding.
Railway records note that Meryla Siding on the Great Southern Railway was built as a loop siding and first mentioned in the timetable of September 1, 1880. Perhaps of Aboriginal derivation, Meryla was the name of a mountain in the neighbouring valley below Fitzroy Falls, and the siding served the broad valley south of the Mount Broughton ridge. In 1883 a passenger platform was added. To prevent a clash with Meryula on the Cobar line, in 1901 the name was changed to Werai, an Aboriginal word for 'look out'. With the opening of the Exeter Deviation in 1897, the platform and siding were moved to a site on the first curve of the new work. With duplication of the line, an up platform was added and the original one lengthened. It is now unattended.
The next articles will provide a history of Meryla Pass and surrounding locality.
- Berrima District Historical & Family History Society - compiled by PD Morton. Part 1 of a 3-part series. To be continued.