Wairio Branch
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The Wairio Branch is a branch line railway in Southland, New Zealand. It opened in 1882 and is the sole remaining branch line in Southland, and one of only a few in the entire country. A number of smaller, privately owned railways fanned out from the terminus in Wairio; one of these lines, to Ohai, was incorporated into the national network in 1990 and the entire line is now often known as the Ohai Industrial Line.
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[edit] Construction
Construction can be divided into two distinct phases: the Wairio Branch itself, and the lines that were built from the terminus.
[edit] Construction of the Wairio Branch
Built at about the same time as the Riverton section of the Tuatapere Branch, what became the Wairio Branch left the Tuatapere Branch at Thornbury. It was built to not only open up new land to settlement and agricultural use, but also to access coal deposits. In 1879, it was opened to Otautau, and then an extension to Wairio was built, opening on 3 March 1882. This was the terminus of the government's line but not the railway itself. The junction points at Thornbury were initially built pointing towards Riverton rather than Invercargill, implying that the developers might have thought Riverton was going to be the region's major port.
When the Tuatapere Branch closed in 1978, the Makarewa to Thornbury section became part of the Wairio Branch. The closure of the Kingston Branch in 1982 meant the remaining section of line from Makarewa to Invercargill was incorporated into the Wairio Branch too. This section of track is some of the oldest in New Zealand; originally built with wooden rails, it opened in 1864.
[edit] Construction of the private coal lines from Wairio
The development of private railway lines beyond Wairio was somewhat complex. The first was established not long after the Wairio Branch was opened and was simply an extension of a little over two miles that was privately owned, but operated by the Railways Department, to the Nightcaps Coal Company in nearby Nightcaps. The roads in the region of Ohai in 1909 were described as "unspeakably bad" in a publication by the Ohai Railway Board in 1925; although significant coal deposits were located in the area, it was difficult and hardly viable to transport the coal the short distance to the railway in Nightcaps. For this reason, another line from Wairio was proposed, but delays and negotiations meant that it did not open until June 1914. This line was operated by the Wairio Railway & Coal Company (WR&CC) and it served two additional mines in Moretown, a locality south of the township of Ohai, but like the Nightcaps line, did not provide reasonable access to Ohai's mines. Thus a third line was required.
While the WR&CC's line was under construction, mining interests in Ohai united to present a petition that the government acquire the WR&CC line and extend it into Ohai. Unfortunately, the arguments in favour of this proposal were presented to a parliamentary committee in 1914 just as the hostilities of World War I broke out in Europe and further consideration of the proposal was postponed. However, later that year the Local Railways Act was passed by the government and, despite objections from the Nightcaps Coal Company and others in Nightcaps, the Ohai Railway District was declared on 4 May 1916. The declaration of this District included a condition that the Ohai Railway Board had to acquire the WR&CC line before constructing any new railway. The case for acquisition went to a compensation court, and, upon paying the sum of 19,862 pounds 6 shillings and 6 pence, the Ohai Railway Board took control of the WR&CC line on 22 June 1917.
The trackage acquired from the WR&CC was built to the low standards of a bush tramway, unsatisfactory as a permanent line. It could not even be appropriately extended into Ohai, though in 1919, an extension of 1 5/8 miles was opened to serve mines in the locality of Mossbank. In 1918 a proposal to build a third line directly from Wairio to Ohai was made, and it included a small deviation through Morley Village, considered part of Nightcaps. The construction of the line was opposed by the Nightcaps Coal Company, but after two commissions were held, approval to build the line was granted and construction commenced in July 1919. The first section was opened for traffic to Tinkers on 1 September 1920, but due to difficulties with the terrain, the Ohai section of the line was not completed until December 1924 and opened to traffic in the new year. In 1934, the line reached its final terminus of Birchwood, 19 kilometres from Wairio. As the railway was built to the national standard, the Ohai Railway Board suggested that the government could acquire it as the start of a route northwards to Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, but nothing came of this.
[edit] Operation
Freight trains off the Wairio Branch were largely industrial, and passengers were carried from Wairio to Invercargill from the line's opening until well into the 20th century. Due to decay of the old WR&CC line, the government's Railways Department stated that it would not permit its wagons to be used on the line past 31 December 1924, and thus the timing of the opening of the line to Ohai at the start of January 1925 proved to be fortuitous, as it could carry traffic from the mines that had previously utilised the WR&CC route. Later in 1925, the Nightcaps Coal Company shut down operations and had their railway extension acquired by the Railways Department, who dismantled it in 1926.
The Ohai Railway Board used locomotives bought from the Railways Department as motive power - initially, one C and two FA class locomotives were employed, and they were later replaced by an X class tender engine and a WAB class tank locomotive. Upon dieselisation in the 1960s, small diesel shunters such as a member of the DSA class were used, and then a DJ class locomotive was employed. With the incorporation of the Ohai line in the national network in the early 1990s, the motive power used on the line was whatever was employed to haul the train from Invercargill. The line from Invercargill is now known as the Ohai Industrial Line and one train runs every weekday from Invercargill and return, arriving at Ohai at 9:30am and leaving two hours later. This service also operates when required on Saturdays and Sundays.
[edit] The preservation movement
The Ohai Railway Board was closely associated with the railway preservation movement. Its former steam locomotives, X 442 and WAB 794, were donated to the New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society in 1968 and have now been leased to the Feilding and District Steam Rail Society for restoration. WAB 794 is currently in mainline operating condition and hauls heritage passenger trains to locations in the North Island from its Feilding depot and has even seen service hauling the Overlander express on "steam weekends". In Ohai itself, the Ohai Railway Board established a Heritage Trust that is currently preserving facilities in Wairio and seeking to restore a number of steam locomotives of the P and V classes. These engines have been recovered from where they were dumped by a river in Branxholme, a former Kingston Branch town that is now on the Wairio Branch.
[edit] External link
[edit] Reference
- Churchman, Geoffrey B., and Hurst, Tony; The Railways Of New Zealand: A Journey Through History, HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand), 1991 reprint
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