the railway provided impetus for growth in the district, and in may 1893 local residents held a public meeting to discuss the creation of a roads board that could give attention to the maintenance and development of local roads. at this point in time, roads in the district were the responsibility of the canning, fremantle, jandakot, murray and wandering road boards for all of whom it was an outlying and unimportant area. in october 1894, parliament agreed to the formation of a roads board which on 12 december 1894 was gazetted as the 'kelmscott roads board', later to be the armadale-kelmscott roads board (1910), the armadale-kelmscott shire council (1961), then the armadale town council (1979), and now the city of armadale (1985).