With the European settlement of Australia in the 19th century, the industrial development of the continent was closely related to the construction and extension of railway lines. Numerous railway dams were built to provide water for the steam locomotives and several are still used today. In this paper, the authors reviewed six railway dams. One, the 75-Miles dam, was a thick concrete arch dam, the first concrete arch dam in Australia and possibly in the world. The Tallong dam, completed in 1883, is an unique brick buttress-slab structure. The de Burgh dam, 1907-1908, was the first reinforced-concrete thin-arch dam in Australia. The other three structures were thin concrete arch dams but their reservoirs rapidly silted up, one being subjected to the most extreme recorded sedimentation rate in Australia. The background of the railway engineers is discussed. It is shown that, in the 19th century, the railway engineers had a broad-based education, and their expertise led to advanced dam designs (e.g. 75-Miles dam, de Burgh dam)
