An Australian railway enthusiast spent 13 years building a miniature version of a 315-kilometre Adelaide-to-Serviceton rail route inside his backyard shed, complete with 50 metres of track over three levels
The Adelaide-to-Bridgewater passenger service ended in 1987. In Peter Michalak’s backyard shed, the train still makes the journey. It passes the station, the old mill and a tree-covered hillside, moving through a miniature version of South Australia where some journeys never stopped.For 13 years, Michalak has been building the Hills Line, an HO-scale, i.e. 1:87, railway recreating the 315-kilometre corridor between Adelaide and Serviceton, just across the Victorian border. About 50 metres of mainline track loops through three levels, passing stations, freight yards and hills.Bridgewater is the heart of the project. Passenger trains once carried people from Adelaide into the Adelaide Hills, but services beyond Belair were withdrawn in 1987. Patronage had fallen, particularly after the South Eastern Freeway offered a faster route into the city. Today, passenger trains terminate at Belair. In Michalak’s version of events, the service to Bridgewater never disappeared.“I grew up catching SteamRanger trains to Bridgewater as a kid in the school holidays,” he told the ABC. “I had a lot of memories of going up there, and I had to create it.” Bridgewater was the first station he built, originally as a portable model for exhibitions. It has since become the centrepiece of a much larger railway. “Bridgewater, in this reality, still has passenger train services to it,” he said.The Adelaide-to-Melbourne route was once part of a broad-gauge network, with the lines meeting at Serviceton in 1887. In 1995, the interstate corridor was converted to standard gauge. Serviceton’s two-storey brick station, built in 1888, was a border hub with customs offices and a place for South Australian and Victorian train crews to change over. Michalak has left space for it, although its full model is still a work in progress.The railway is not a literal miniature map of 315 kilometres. Michalak calls it “selectively compressed”: the trains are HO scale, but distances, platforms and infrastructure have been shortened to fit the space. A 70-wagon freight train, for instance, becomes a 10-wagon one. He describes himself as a “proto freelancer”, taking recognisable elements of the real railway and recreating a version that works within the shed. Mile End, once a huge rail yard, is represented by three tracks.The layout also includes Pinnaroo, Tailem Bend, Mount Lofty and a branch to Port Adelaide, where a miniature version of the heritage Hart’s Mill stands beside the tracks. Buildings are made by hand, while the roads carry period cars, including a green VB Commodore matching the family car Michalak remembers from childhood. Tiny signs and a Country Fire Service truck at a level crossing placed the railway in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Trees around Bridgewater are fashioned from sedum, a garden plant.Some trains can be bought ready-made. Others, particularly those unique to South Australia, have to be built from scratch. That includes the Redhen railcars, locally built passenger trains that served Adelaide from the 1950s until 1996. Michalak’s brother, Nick, prepares computer-aided design drawings, while Michalak 3D-prints components for engines and carriages. He still cuts, folds and solders brass by hand, a process that comes with burnt fingers and a fair amount of swearing.Railway history runs through Michalak’s family. His grandfather began working as a porter at Tailem Bend station, and Michalak received his first electric train set when he was three. Local history groups have helped him find photographs and records missing from museums. His brother is building Blackwood station, while a friend and former railway controller has drawn up train-control graphs for operating sessions, compressing a 12-hour shift into about two and a half hours.Beyond the shed, Michalak is vice-president of SteamRanger Heritage Railway, which operates tourist trains between Mount Barker and Victor Harbor. In 2026, he documented its history in a 116-page book illustrated with more than 200 images and accounts from volunteers.The Hills Line began in 2013 as a portable model of Bridgewater. By 2016, Michalak and his wife had decided to turn it into a permanent home layout. It has since outgrown its original purpose and is now too large to travel. He estimates it could take another decade to finish. Adelaide station is being recreated as it looked in the late 1980s, complete with its distinctive orange platform chairs. Serviceton, still partly represented by a cardboard mock-up, is waiting its turn.There is a satisfaction in watching a train pass through a place reconstructed down to its signage and station furniture. But this is not a museum display meant only to be peered into. Signals, timetables and train movements are meant to be used. “It’s a very social part of it all,” Michalak told ABC. “It’s built to use.”For now, Bridgewater still has its trains. And in this small, carefully assembled version of South Australia, the past has somewhere to go.
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