Biggest locomotives in Australia built by South Australia's Perry Engineering in 1920s before 1930s Depression
One of the 100-ton Mountain (or 4-8-2) engines – Australia's biggest to that time – built by South Australia's Perry Engineering for the Tasmanian government railways in 1922.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Perry Engineering in 1922 built the six largest locomotives in Australia to that time – the 100-ton Mountain (or 4-8-2) engines – part of a £164,592 contract for Tasmanian government railways.
Perry’s production at its Mile End South and Gawler plants had expanded since 1915 to include more locomotives, boilers and general rolling stock for the commonwealth, South Australian and Tasmanian railways. In a 1927 £25,880 contract, Perry’s built 17 locomotives used in Victoria to construct the Hume Weir and the Silvan Dam.
Locomotives stayed the largest part of Perry’s production until the late 1920s. It also built smaller steam and internal combustion engines; ships’ requirements, including capstans, hoists, windlasses and winches; a wide range of mining and manufacturing equipment including concrete mixers, cranes, crushers, excavators and pumps; road-making machinery; cableways for lock construction at South Australia’s Overland Corner in 1924; kilns for South Australian and Queensland cement companies; locomotive turntables; and bridges. The bridges were at Burra and Little Para (1924) and Paringa (1926) and many smaller ones for South Australian Railways rehabilitation schemes of the mid 1920s.
By 1927, Perry Engineering employed around 500 at its two sites, had an annual output worth £250,000, accumulated capital of £100,000 and exported to, among other places, New Zealand, Java and the Malay states. Leslie Cecil Leslie, Perry’s chief designer and technical supervisor for more than 30 years from the 1920s, played a key role in the company’s growth. In 1925, the Made in Australian Council produced a seven-minute film on a day in the life of Perry Engineering.
By the mid 1920s, owner Sam Perry had risen to in South Australian business ranks, including president of the South Australian employers’ federation, chair of the South Australian chamber of manufactures and South Australian board of trade and member of Adelaide chamber of commerce, the central council of Australian employers and the South Australian board of industry.
Perry also was a committed Methodist. In addition to Isaiah, other brothers Enoch and John were Methodist ministers in the United States of America, as was nephew Wesley, while another nephew, Charles, was a minister in South Australia. After Isaiah died, in 1915, Sam Perry paid for the Perry memorial pipe organ, designed by minister T. Geddes White and installed at Holder Methodist Church, West Adelaide (later Mile End).
The late 1920s challenged Perry Engineering. When the South Australian government centralised and expanded its train construction at the modernised Islington railway workshop or secured contracts from interstate or overseas, Perry’s lost a big source of revenue. In 1928, Perry closed the Gawler foundry and concentrated work at Mile End South. The next year, the Depression hit Perry’s product suddenly and hard.
Sam Perry’s health waned and he died in March 1930. For many years, Perry had groomed his nephew Frank Tennyson Perry (second son of brother Isaiah) to take over running the business. Born in Gawler in 1887, after schooling at Prince Alfred College, Frank Perry had started working with his uncle at 16. He became manager of Martin and Company in 1915 and a few years later the works manager at Mile End South.
Industrious, tough and astute, by 1927 Frank was general manager of the combined Perry works. After Sam Perry’s death, Frank became chairman and manager of Perry Engineering and soon rationalised and improved production at Mile End South. In 1931, the company was incorporated, becoming Perry Engineering Co. Ltd.. Frank and his cousin Charles were two of its three directors, with Frank managing director. They decided to return a high proportion of company profits into the business.
