advent of diesel and electric trains in the 1960s. Together with the decline in rail travel and freight, and the economic rationalising of the 1980s and 1990s, the town of Werris Creek lost much of its importance as a railway hub. Werris Creek was a purpose-built rail centre and as such, claims to be Australia's first specific railway town. It dates to 1877 when the NSW Government decided that the Great Northern Line needed a depot and junction from where branches would run to the west and north-west, thus helping to open up and serve the rich pastoral areas further inland. Werris Creek became a major junction, with the Main Northern, Mungindi and Binnaway lines all intersecting in the region. It was the first, and remains the last, railway town in New South Wales. In 1913, a locomotive depot opened with a roundhouse built in 1920. An isolated bushland spot was chosen where the northern line at that time cut through George Single's paddock, halfway between Quirindi and Tamworth. This was called Werris Creek, a variation on the Aboriginal name for the district, Weia Weia, meaning "stop here, rest awhile". The town became the busiest rural freight base in the state as well as a key passenger junction as goods and people alike joined or left the main Sydney line destined to or coming from places like Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and many similar settlements that were emerging. By the early 1880s a magnificent railway station had appeared at Werris Creek. The NSW State Rail Authority Heritage Unit described it as "a remarkable building that could easily grace a city ...yet, incongruously, a lonely citadel in the middle of the bush". It boasted an impressive refreshment room in the Victorian Free Classical style built of rich, red bricks in tuck-pointed Flemish bond with crisp stucco embellishments, pronounced cornices with paired brackets and moulded, grouped windows. A grand (red) cedar staircase led to a floor of bedrooms for those travellers who had time to sleep between connections. It was "not unlike a city bank...until it was covered with its first of many layers of soot". The late 1880s heritage-listed station building was designed by John Whitton and is the third largest in New South Wales. In 1896 a locomotive shed formerly in use in Gunnedah was erected opposite the station. In 1917, a 10 stall roundhouse was erected one kilometre south of