For many years, Jandakot residents had to travel 7 miles or more (about 11 kms) through bush and farmland to reach Fremantle.  The track was a simple ‘plank road’ made of jarrah sleepers with compacted limestone in between. This made it a rough journey, difficult for those travelling on foot or by horse and cart. It was especially hard for local farmers who regularly had to transport their produce to Fremantle for sale. By 1900, many locals had had enough.
 
On a stormy evening in June 1900 a large meeting was held at the Forrest Road Agricultural Hall. More than 50 settlers from Jandakot and Armadale attended the meeting and many others sent letters of support. The group was determined to secure a new railway line from Armadale, through Jandakot, to Fremantle.  The proposed line would connect with the South-Western Railway line which went from Perth to Bunbury.
 
The following day, the Western Mail described the meeting as the ‘most important and successful political gathering that has ever assembled in the Jandakot area’.  According to the report, ‘[g]reat enthusiasm characterised the meeting throughout, and with much force and argument the proposed Armadale to Fremantle railway, via Jandakot route, was advocated, and its many advantages exhaustively enumerated by the various speakers’.  This initial meeting eventually led to the establishment of the Jandakot Railway League and a six year campaign for a new railway line to Fremantle Port.
 

Hicks became known as ‘the diplomatic and omnipresent Chairman of the Jandakot Railway League’. He continuously opposed the Fremantle Roads Board, and J.J. Holmes MLA, who were pushing for a different railway line: a Mundijong-Fremantle link.
 
Hicks was also an active member of the Jandakot Agricultural Society and the Jandakot District Roads Board.  Together, these organisations tirelessly advocated for an Armadale-Fremantle railway link.
 
At a special meeting held by the Agricultural Society in 1902, a motion put forward the Secretary made clear the organisation’s position:
 

In the opinion of this meeting a railway through Jandakot, to connect Fremantle with the South Western line, is a work of great urgency, and is absolutely necessary for the opening up and development of the Jandakot agricultural area, and as Jandakot settlers have proved beyond all doubt that the district is capable of supporting a large population of producers, this meeting respectfully urges upon the Government the pressing necessity for the immediate construction of the line.

 ‘Armadale to Fremantle via Jandakot railway,’ Umpire, 15 February 1902, 4.

 

Although the Agricultural Society fought for the benefit of many growers and residents of Jandakot, it must be noted that they also ignored or discriminated against certain groups. For instance, not only were Chinese market gardeners excluded from the Society, in 1901 the group also passed a motion (put forward by James Hicks) that specified that ‘[a]ny person leasing land to or employing Chinamen’ was also barred from the organisation.

Reflecting the deeply entrenched racism that characterised Australian society, the group was determined to ‘discourage the introduction of Chinamen into the Jandakot area, as their presence in any capacity whatever will be detrimental to the best interests of the district’.

By February 1902, nearly two years into the campaign, Jandakot was still without a railway, and the settlers continued to ‘have to plough their ways through sand from their homes to a market and back again in the same way as they did two years ago'.

Luckily Hicks, a landowner in both Fremantle and Jandakot, and with drapery stores in Fremantle and Kalgoorlie, had a good understanding of politics. He invited everyone who mattered in the government and Lands Department, as well as other VIP’s, to the Jandakot Agricultural Society’s Annual Show on 26 February 1902.

This gala event, attended by 850 people, was a perfect opportunity to put forward the case for an Armadale-Fremantle line.  As the Umpire described:
 
‘Bunting floated in the breeze, and music was good and plentiful… The Armadale to Fremantle via Jandakot Railway Committee had a calico streamer setting forth the claims of the district for a railway’.

When there was no action, the gala event was repeated the following year in 1903 with similar speeches presented to the Minister for Works and Railway, C. H. Rason.   James Hicks also continued to regularly spar with his rival J. J. Holmes, often in the letters to the Editor pages of local newspapers.

Holmes was determinedly putting pressure on the government to approve a Mundijong-Fremantle line. Likewise, the Millars Karri & Jarrah Co. was also campaigning for its preferred option, a Jandakot-Mundijong alignment that would further reduced freight mileage. Despite their significant influence, the government chose the Armadale option because it was the shortest route from Jandakot to the Southwest Railway.

The Jandakot Railway Bill passed the parliamentary sitting in January 1904 but was hampered by J.J. Holmes until he lost his seat in July.  In July 1904, Truth reported that the:

 

The struggling settlers of Jandakot have been jubilating over the disastrous defeat of J. J. Holmes in the recent Homeric struggle for the representation of East Fremantle in the State Parliament. "Joe", was the chief stumbling-block in the road of the proposed Fremantle-Jandakot-Armadale railway, so that his compulsory disappearance from the political arena has materially strengthened the case of the settlers. Holmes was a strong partisan of the suggestion to connect the loop at Jarrahdale with the S. W. line, and his opinion was probably colored by the fact that "Holmes' Paddock" would have substantially increased in value if his desires had been given effect to. Now stated that the Government have agreed to at once complete the survey from Jandakot to Armadale.

 ‘Random Remarks,’ Truth, 16 July 1904, 1.