Tribute to former Adelaide Hills passenger rail in backyard model

Calls may be continuing for a reinstated passenger railway service to the Adelaide Hills, but a world away from public transport lobbying, Peter Michalak is building his own version in a backyard shed.

Harking back to the late 1980s and early 90s, Mr Michalak's HO scale (1:87) Hills Line railway layout represents the 315-kilometre stretch between Adelaide and Serviceton, just over the Victorian border.

Featuring the Murray Mallee town of Pinnaroo, and Tailem Bend railway station with buildings modelled to scale, its centrepiece is Bridgewater railway station in the Adelaide Hills, complete with the old mill and tree-covered hillside.

"Bridgewater, in this reality, still has passenger train services to it," Mr Michalak said.

"I grew up catching SteamRanger [heritage] trains to Bridgewater as a kid in the school holidays, so I had a lot of memories of going up there, and I had to create it."

Bridgewater was the first railway station he created, and was designed to be portable and taken on exhibit. 

The layout, which Mr Michalak started in 2013, has since grown too big and too complicated to be exhibited.

It now gives a "selectively compressed" version of the much longer railway, and includes Mount Lofty Railway Station, while his brother, Nick, is currently building Blackwood Railway Station.

Mr Michalak has built about 50 metres of mainline rail, which loops around his shed over three levels, and hosts some very familiar trains built to scale.

"The only difference being, instead of running a 70-wagon container train, I'm running a 10-wagon container train because you obviously don't have the real estate to play with," Mr Michalak said.

"The platforms are also shortened, along with some other bits and pieces that have been selectively compressed to fit the space we've got."

A freight train engine even makes realistic sounds as it trundles past Bridgewater, with trees fashioned from the sedum "autumn joy" plant.

The engine whines through the hills and at one point lets loose a blast from its horn that could have come from the gullies of Belair.

Mr Michalak is focused on building part of the once sprawling Adelaide Railway Station at the end of the line, which is being modelled on its appearance before the convention centre was built over part of the station in 1987.

Mr Michalak's layout even includes the "international orange chairs" on the platform.

He said his model of Serviceton Railway Station with its heritage-listed two-storey brick complex, when finished, "will probably be the key piece".

"Particularly, given the size of the building that has to be built for that, it's going to be the real showpiece for the whole layout, but that's still a long way down the track," Mr Michalak.

"It has a cardboard mock-up stuck to the back wall at the moment."

The layout also includes a different branch line to Port Adelaide where a mill, based on the heritage Hart's Mill building, is modelled.

Mr Michalak estimates it will be another 10 years until the project is fully completed.

Nick undertakes the computer-aided design drawings (CAD) and Mr Michalak 3D-prints the train engine and carriage components.

Some trains can be sourced, such as freight trains with a national profile, but many of those unique to South Australia have to be constructed by hand.

This includes the classic SA-built Redhen passenger series, which was in service across the metropolitan area from the 1950s to 1996.

They even took passengers into the Adelaide Hills, a service that was progressively wound back by the state government in the 1980s before it stopped altogether at Belair in 1987.

Far from reality

There has been growing pressure on the government to reinstate passenger rail transport to the hills due to its increasing population and rising congestion on the South-Eastern Freeway.

Mr Michalak, who is also the SteamRanger Heritage Railway vice-president, would love to see it reinstated into the hills from Adelaide.

"Unfortunately, I think we've got a better chance of aliens being located and wanting to come and talk to us than getting our state government to commit to doing rail in the hills," Mr Michalak said.

"It's a shame because it's not that hard. It's just there's a lack of willpower to do it."

Helping to run a number of real-life steam- and diesel-hauled passenger trains between Mount Barker and Victor Harbor for tourists, he continues to work on his own layout at home, finding the occasional hour or two in the shed between full-time work, volunteering and family life.

Taking the creation as seriously as any number of similar enthusiasts across the city, Mr Michalak's friend, a former South Australian Railways and national train controller, has even drawn up train control graphs that replicate the real railway's timetable.

The timetable, however, will compress a 12-hour shift into about a two-and-a-half-hour window.

"The idea is that we crack a few beers and we have someone here controlling the train movements," Mr Michalak said.