North Auckland Line [0F]: Volume 1 Progress Update 6

Good morning. Work on Volume 1 as we know is waiting for Volume 6 to be completed. Earlier this week Volume 6 made a major advance and then we took a day's break from V6 and during that time we have done some additional work on V1 and also completed an aerial mosaic of the Auckland station and wharves using 1972 aerial images from Retrolens, which is part of Volume 2 whenever that is next worked on.

We are very keen to get to work on Volume 1 next week as we have to get back to work on Volume 6 to finish it with three small corridors waiting to be mapped and the maps produced for Volume 6 which will only take a day or two. 

Since our last update for Volume 1, we have completed mosaics for the North Auckland Line from Westfield to Newmarket, the Newmarket Branch and the Onehunga Branch, and have started on a mosaic project for the first section of Newmarket-Waimauku. In other words the first three tasks in the list of four for mosaics have been completed. However Newmarket-Waimauku is the most complex because it covers a total distance of 43 km from Newmarket and therefore it is a very long section and we will not be able to give continuous coverage even although we do have continuous 0.075m aerial coverage available for Auckland City the entire distance. We will have to see which areas do need coverage but there are continuous station and corridor surveys all the way out that we have already downloaded from Retrolens to create the mosaics.

In accordance with the "Basic+" definition for this project once we have the mosaic tiles we will not be putting in any historical information from them except two or three places, which are the Ellerslie Racecourse platforms (already done), Mt Albert Ballast Pit, and Swanson Deviation. We may reconsider if it becomes apparent any historical data can be added quickly without requiring a lot of time. However the usual problem is that mosaic project files quickly grow and reach an unmanageable size for processing (it can often take 2 hours to save a large project file) and then have to be split in multiple pieces. We would probably only seek to add additional historical coverage in a few places, and not at all at this stage of the project.

The section from Newmarket to New Lynn will be completed in mosaics today and we are currently downloading the files needed to cover the rest of the urban rail corridor out to Waimauku. However the highest resolution continuous station survey coverage only goes as far as Henderson. From there to Waitakere and beyond relies on corridor surveys and probably as there is far less history, the last parts at Kumeu and Waimauku will not be completed as a continuous mosaic section from Waitakere. Work will be stopped after completing Newmarket-New Lynn to allow Volume 6 completion to resume, and we will then be back into working on Volume 1 sometime next week.

North Auckland Line [0E]: Volume 1 Progress Update 5

Good morning. Whilst still working on the last stage of Volume 6, we have been continuing preliminary work on Volume 1 and deciding exactly what the scope of "Basic+" coverage for it will be.

As noted previously we will put in continuous historical aerial mosaics for the Auckland suburban area, which means all of the following:

• Westfield to Newmarket (first section of the NAL)
• Onehunga Branch
• Newmarket Branch
• Newmarket to Waimauku

This will only be for one historical era - in most cases 1972 or 1979. Beyond Waimauku we will only include the aerial photos that have already been created in previous work on Volume 1.

In addition, the diagram detail to be included in this edition of Volume 1 will only show that which is visible in the current aerial photography. Whilst we will as mentioned above have the historical mosaics available, we will not be drawing in the historical detail into diagrams for this edition of Volume 1, although the mosaics will be published in the aerial maps. However, details for rural stations previously put into the maps will be retained.

We feel setting these boundaries will help us to keep this release of Volume 1 on track as we do not want to spend a lot of time on and are very keen to keep it to less than a month of production. It is already necessary to redraw all the main lines in the NAL in Auckland from scratch because they were represented with a generic "multi line main" symbology in the previous edition. This has added some unanticipated extra work.

North Auckland Line [0D]: Volume 1 Progress Update 4

Good evening. Due to the near completion of Volume 6, we are currently taking a look at resources for completing Volume 1. The North Auckland Line runs from Westfield Junction via Penrose Junction and Newmarket Junction then turns west to head to the outskirts of the Auckland urban area at Waitakere. From there it carries on north to the boundary of Auckland City and then up into Northland, where traditionally it reached to Opua, about 300 km from Westfield.

Our intention in the development of Volume 1 at this stage is to use the existing aerial mosaics previously developed, without adding to them. This will be a "Basic+" level of development at this time. However as we have no aerial coverage for the Auckland urban area, we will be adding this from Westfield to Waitakere as well as for the Onehunga Branch. It happens that a major aerial survey from Henderson to Westfield was undertaken in 1972 and this will be the basis for the update. Part of the same survey also takes in the line to Onehunga. From Henderson to Waitakere we have the use of the corridor survey taken in 1979. 

Waitakere to Opua and branches is covered with the mosaics that have already been completed. Although the extra mosaics will take a bit of work to assemble, we are fortunate to have had a feature request for Gimp implemented in version 2.10.10 which was released recently. This is the "Readjust" capability of the Unified Transform tool, which makes it much easier and a great deal quicker to adjust the overlays of historical aerial layers at any point instead of just near the edges which the default transform functionality addresses. This will also result in more accurate mosaics than we have been able to produce in the past. Because of this we expect adding the new mosaics will be a relatively quick task, taking maybe 2-3 days only. We do have to check and as necessary update the existing mosaics which has been underway since earlier this week alongside the Volume 6 work and then do the basic corridor alignments as well as drawing station layouts.

So whilst we are still working on Volume 6, once this is completed we won't be catching our breath to push on to Volume 1 and get it together in record time. Maybe 2-3 weeks depending on our outside commitments.

North Auckland Line [0C]: Volume 1 Progress Update 3

Good afternoon. The work on updating Volume 1 of the NZ Rail Maps project, which deals with the North Auckland Line and its branches, is to resume in a few weeks once work on Volume 6 currently under production has been completed.

We last worked on Volume 1 less than a year ago, before we adopted our definite production schedule for the maps in general, of ensuring one volume would be completed before moving onto another volume, so that each volume would be completed sequentially instead of concurrently. This has resulted in other volumes taking preference in that schedule. The schedule has also been revised, as documented elsewhere, to ensure Basic levels are completed for all volumes first.

However, when we go over to Volume 1, we will be completing it as a "Basic+" level. At this level, we are producing maps using existing previously completed historical aerial photography. Normally the user wouldn't see these maps included at a Basic level. In this case because we have a set of aerial mosaics for a number of stations along the route, we will add these to the maps by default. This means historical yard layouts can be provided for a number of stations, as well as current layouts.

No additional aerial photos will be added into the maps because the aim of Basic completion is to get it done as quickly as possible. There are a number of stations we don't have historical coverage of at present, especially east of Waitakere. These can be added later when we come back to finish the volume at the Intermediate level, which could easily happen by the end of this year.

NZ Rail Maps Project Development Report [2020D]

So here is our latest update on the overall NZ Rail Maps project. As we made clear earlier this year, we are working on completing all 12 volumes in 2020. That is an aspirational goal and for various reasons it's quite possible that goal won't be met. However it is worthwhile making a serious attempt to achieve it, even if we only get 10 of the 12 volumes actually completed by Christmas.

At the moment the schedule has slipped by about 10-14 days, based on when Volume 5 was finally published, and our anticipated schedule for Volume 6 which is currently in development. Looking at our last project development report published two weeks ago, we anticipated strong progress at that time. The first set of mosaics completed was for Wellington Yard, which was finished around the time of that report, or a couple of days later. These then sat for 10 days whilst the mosaics for the rest of the corridor were pushed ahead. This turned out to take somewhat longer than anticipated, naturally, and then when we finally produced some tiles for Wellington, bugs were found and have had to be fixed.

Because of the scale of the mosaics being somewhat more ambitious than expected, we have taken a bit longer than planned to churn these out, but progress is starting to happen and depending on how many bugs are found and have to be resolved, we anticipate completion of them will push into the middle of next week. We then have to update the map content as quickly as possible. On the other hand, like Volume 5, the actual content that is presented will be much more extensive than what we have published at any level before. For example we now have the full coverage of Hutt Shops and the Seaview industrial area on the Gracefield Branch, plus historical views of every station in the Hutt Valley, including multiple eras of Upper Hutt. We also now have coverage of Summit and Cross Creek when they were open, plus extra material for Maymorn, Kaitoke, Rimutaka Loop, Speedys Crossing , Featherston, Carterton and Masterton - as well as the Woodville junction that has already been completed in Volume 5.

The next question of course is what will follow Volume 6 and this is being eagerly anticipated already. That will be probably Volume 1, North Auckland, followed by Volume 3, ECMT. And whilst Volume 1 is relatively straightforward to complete with many mosaics recently produced, Volume 3 has very little. Because the ECMT is a very extensive corridor with numerous branches, and a few small areas have already been completed, but there would be a lot more needed. So maybe these two volumes together are a month each but Volume 1 will take less than a month and Volume 3, more. Volume 1 does not have any mosaics for Auckland and this is essential so this will add some work.

This leaves us Volume 4 and 2 to complete the North Island and these have been left as long as possible because significant chunks of Horizons Regional Council's territory and Taranaki does not yet have full Retrolens coverage because it has only been added since the start of this year. Volume 2 would be the most affected but we do have extensive coverage completed now of parts of Wellington, and Hamilton, but none of Auckland, and probably for the NIMT we would expect to have some of the major deviated areas covered as well as stations like Taihape and Taumarunui. For Volume 4 we would look to update Whanganui, which is already improving, and add New Plymouth, Stratford, any significant SOL station, and Okahukura.

So the schedule for the next four volumes after this is pretty well thought out and the work is going to keep being pretty intensive up to the middle of the year and probably a bit beyond.

HIGH POWERED WORKING GROUP RECOMMENDS PORTS OF AUCKLAND CLOSURE IN FAVOUR OF NORTHPORT DEVELOPMENT

The Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy Working Group, an independent working group established by Cabinet last year to undertake a comprehensive review of NZ’s freight and logistics sector for the upper North Island, has released its second report of three planned. It recommends that Ports of Auckland undergo a managed closure and that Northport at Whangarei be developed as a new major freight port for the Upper North Island, along with options for continued investment in Port of Tauranga as an alternate port for the UNI freight task.

The base assumption in the report is that public pressure in the City of Auckland will force the Port to eventually relocate to a new site outside the City. Whilst Auckland Council has desired to keep the Port within its regional boundary by touting a possible development in the Firth of Thames, the report found on the basis of a Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) analysis, the development of Northport as the main alternative had a much higher BCR – 2.0 – compared to the Firth of Thames option’s BCR of only 0.2. The option for Northport and Tauranga sharing the existing POAL traffic has a lower BCR of 0.6 than the Northport main alternative scenario,, due to the costs of additional investment at Tauranga, whilst the option for closing POAL and shifting all of its current freight to Tauranga has a BCR of only 0.1. Thus, moving all of the existing freight from POAL to Northport yields by far the strongest financial case in the scenarios that involve closing Ports of Auckland.

The proposal to develop Northport as a main or shared alternate to POAL would require a substantial investment in the North Auckland Line, which has so far had $94 million of upgrade work approved by Government. A much more significant business case that is currently under consideration for Northland’s rail network involves the likely scenario of building the long-mooted spur line from Oakleigh to Marsden Point, an essential missing link in establishing rail freight services to the Northland Region’s major international port. Rail haulage of freight to and from the port has not been possible since it took over from Whangarei around 20 years ago. Significant development of the spur route was undertaken by the Clark Labour Government and Northland Regional Council in the late 2000s but was stopped by the incoming National government, and resumed in 2017. The geotechnical analysis of this route has been completed, and detailed engineering scenarios and costs are currently being developed.

The working group has a third report due out shortly to consider other issues and there are many questions relating to this proposal. The most significant one is that the costs of moving freight into and out of Auckland would be increased. Large volumes of containers can be moved more efficiently by sea than by any form of land based transport. Therefore the onus would fall upon the rail network to develop the most cost effective means of running trains between Northport and Auckland, a distance of around 225 km (port to port). This would entail the development of the highest capacity capability to run the largest trains operated in New Zealand and likely require the full doubling of the existing route over time, and possibly future electrification. Currently the line has numerous tunnel clearance problems and there are some steep grades in a few places that could benefit from easing to increase capacity. The biggest questions of course are political ones, that the Government will need to weigh up before deciding whether to proceed with the overall scenario, or other possibilities.

This scenario overall is more realistic than one that has been floated in some circles, that Northport should be the sole international terminal in NZ with all other locations served by land transport links or coastal shipping. However the number of international container terminals presently in NZ is excessive. The NZ Shippers Council has suggested four ports (two in each island) would be ideal for NZ’s needs. The UNISC scenario reduces the international container ports in the upper half of the North Island from three to two and is a step in the right direction from that perspective at least.

For more information about the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy, visit their website at

https://transport.cwp.govt.nz/multi-modal/keystrategiesandplans/upper-north-island-supply-chain-strategy/

 The North Auckland Line – 280 km from Auckland (left) to Otiria (right). The former terminus, Opua, is the northern most railway station ever opened in NZ.

Proposed route of the Marsden Point spur between Oakleigh, near Portland, and Northport.

North Auckland Line [3B]: Okaihau Branch 2 - Kawiti Ballast Pit

Kawiti Ballast Pit is near Otiria on the Okaihau Branch. The pit was still open in the 1970s, with machinery and track in place.

The pit traverses more or less the same territory as a section of the Okaihau Branch that crosses a local river with several large bridges, but it doesn't have the bridges. This led to the idea that the bridges should be bypassed by diverting the branch line through the ballast pit site, but this never occurred.

Project Development Report [2019H]

The maps of Northland are progressing well and I have completed detailing the Okaihau Branch all the way to Okaihau and am just tidying up the details of the Rangiahua extension. There are four posts about locations on the branch line which I am completing and there will be another one or two for the extension. At the same time I am exporting the map tiles for the stations going south from Otiria to Waitakere. I have to put together a new Gimp project separately for stations around and including Whangarei as well.

I am also working on the Main South Line in the Dunedin suburban area and extending the existing Gimp project that covered only Dunedin station, to add sections covering all the suburban stations from Dunedin out to Wingatui, which is all covered at 0.125 metre resolution, and will be using high resolution aerial photos from the 1970s as well as some older stuff from the 1940s. As is generally well known the section from Dunedin to Mosgiel built originally in the 1870s, was realigned and duplicated with new tunnels in the 1910s, and then it was altered again in the 1980s with singling,  rebridging and realignment because of the motorway construction. Caversham was particularly impacted by this and the comparisons will be very interesting to look at.

North Auckland Line [3A]: Okaihau Branch 1 - Otiria

The Okaihau Branch is something I have blogged about before. This is the first of four posts covering the junction at Otiria, the ballast pit at Kawiti, the only major intermediate freight station at Kaikohe and the terminus at Okaihau. Otiria is where the North Auckland Line effectively ends at the present time, with a branch going west to Okaihau (originally called the Kaikohe Branch) and (as originally designated) the NAL turning from the north to the east to get to Kawakawa and on to Opua. Both of these stubs closed in the 1980s, but the Kawakawa-Opua section has become the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway. On the other hand the Okaihau Branch was lifted, but the corridor remains in NZRC ownership in case a scenario exists where it might be reinstated in the future.

 Most of what has changed at Otiria can be summed up in buildings: the removal of the station and some of the others, while the loading shelter has increased in size. There were also some houses which are long gone. The yard itself is practically the same as it was in 1971 with just one siding extended and the log loading area added off what was the start of the Okaihau Branch.

Project Development Report [2019G]

In the last couple of weeks I drew maps of Sockburn. I haven't got around to blogging that, instead I just posted the album of maps on the group and another group. A lot of maps production in some areas is more than drawing maps, it is software upgrades and other steps and dealing with issues on the computer, and structuring data, so some of the time was spent dealing with and resolving software issues, testing and changing software versions etc.

It's time to get back into Northland to get the maps finished there and yesterday I was pulling up the maps for five stations between between Auckland and Bay of Islands: Helensville, Maungaturoto, Waiotira, Waitakere and Wellsford. I also have to re-export the maps for stations west and east of Otiria, and there is a separate project for Whangarei and the stations near it. 

The maps for the rest of Northland are continuing to be updated so that I expect to make substantial progress with the maps in general this week and maybe completed this volume at the end of March.

Project Development Report [2019F]

Since last time there has been some progress on Volume 1 but not as much as I had expected. There have been delays for two main reasons, both of them related to the migration to version 3.6 of Qgis. These are simply migrating computers to a new version of Debian, and then discovering it caused problems with the aerial photo mosaic maps that I use.

Because of an issue that I can't yet get the Qgis development community to address, I am faced with spending a lot of time changing all the historical map tiles I have produced, into non progressive JPEG format, because somehow this has been dropped from being supported on the version of Qgis compiled for the buster platform, even though progressive is part of the Jpeg format for at least ten years.

I have currently about 100 Gimp projects that I have to open all the files in, and then re export every historical map tile from, so this is quite possibly several hundred tiles that will have to be re-produced from the projects. This will just be happening gradually as the projects are updated during the year, and before any map volumes are completed. Fortunately I have kept all the mosaics, which occupy 600 GiB of disk space, which typically includes one backup copy and one working copy of each project. On the other hand, the graphics editing computer is more highly specced now and should make the task quite quick by comparison with some of the earlier work.

In respect to the NAL, I have discovered Maungaturoto, a station between Wellsford and Waiotira, needs to be added to the ones I am already doing mosaics of on that line, so that will be added to the maps I am currently generating of the NAL. The detailing of the rest of the lines is also proceeding.

After the NAL is completed it will be onto Volume 5, PNGL. In between right at the moment I am doing a map of Sockburn on the Main South Line in Christchurch, as part of getting maps together for Lyttelton-Rolleston. I'm not doing any of the other stations on this section at this stage, but I have previously done Linwood, Opawa, Addington and Christchurch. A Gimp project will address S-H-I-T (Sockburn Hornby Islington and Templeton) in one file, but only Sockburn is going to actually be completed over the next day or two. However as I have all the base aerial imagery for these sections now in the computer I will do the base map for all the areas in Qgis.

In terms of the project's overall schedule, it's possible if I want to keep the 12 volumes rolling along as expected then I may have to prioritise Basic level development over the Comprehensive development that I have planned otherwise it's looking less likely by the day that all 12 volumes can be progressed as expected by the end of this year. 

I have spent a bit of time in the last few days optimising my desk layout as well so that it makes better use of the available space so that I can get the most out of all the resources to hand to hopefully speed up map production. So I am looking forward to a more productive week coming up.

Project Development Report [2019E] & North Auckland Line [0C]: Progress Report 3

As a result of a lot of hard work I now have practically all of the base aerial photography for Northland which lets me complete the full set of maps for Volume 1. However it looks like I am a bit behind schedule on the timeframe for all 12 volumes for this year and so I will have to push things along as quickly as possible on Volume 1.

I now have historic aerial imagery for the Okaihau and Opua lines and am completing the maps for these sections. I am also starting work on a big Gimp project to do the historic aerials for the other stations that have NZR survey coverage: Whangarei (including Kamo and the Port), Portland, Waiotira, Wellsford, Helensville and Waitakere. So right now there will be a big effort over the next couple of weeks to get as much as possible done by the end of March on completing Volume 1  to the expected standard.

Part of the delay however has been in developing and implementing standards for use across all 12 volumes, specifically the scaling of lower than 0.1 metre scale base imagery, the grid system for cutting 4800x7200 tiles out of that, and the script that automates the processing of grid segments. That is all necessary to get the most out of the high res NZR aerial surveys that are now being more and more used. With that bloc of work completed to implement those systems, things should speed up on that work and I expect to see this happen with the rest of the stations on Volume 1.

As an update on what we complete this year to Comprehensive standard, it will just be these NZR surveys except for Volume 5, PNGL, and Volume 12, OCB/KB. Everything I have done on Volume 1 has been only NZR surveys except for Oakleigh, which was done as an exception because of the Marsden Point junction.

So over coming days the rest of the maps for the NAL should come together.

North Auckland Line [1A]: Opua-Kawakawa 2: Kawakawa 1

Kawakawa is the other end of what is now the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway, which was mentioned in some detail in the first post of this series. For whatever reason, the vintage railway was started at Kawakawa, even although it should have been possible to take in the line back to Otiria, although not initially as the section to Moerewa was probably still being used to serve the sidings there in the 1980s. In the course of these articles on the NAL we will take in Moerewa and Otiria, as well as Kaikohe and Okaihau which are also in the works. But for now, Kawakawa.

Kawakawa is only a small station, although under preservation it has grown due to being the main base of BOIVR. Their operation as BOISR started more or less as soon as NZR had vacated, or fairly soon after that, and it's not clear how much infrastructure was left at Kawakawa when they moved in, as we can understand that in the same context as Opua.

Here are the maps of Kawakawa.

The main station site in 1975.. As we can see, not that much to it. A station, goods shed and loading bank.

Today Kawakawa is very different. There is the turntable relocated from Opua where the loading bank used to be. There are sheds and other buildings, while the goods shed has gone. In fact the station building is probably about all they have there that is the same as NZR days. And let's face it - Kawakawa is a small site. It was small in NZR days, but it's smaller now because a road has been pushed through a part of it. Another example like Opua of what can happen when a local government abuses their power to push stuff through.

There are only two places in New Zealand where a railway line runs along the middle of a state highway. One is at Kawakawa, and the other is at Ohai.

At the end of the street is the first bridge on the BOIVR. There used to be a road bridge next to it. This has been replaced in more recent years by a footbridge.

North Auckland Line [2A]: Oakleigh-Marsden Point 1

Posting has been slow for the past week as I have been working on some technical challenges to produce the map tiles for the Okaihau and Opua lines. These have now been overcome and the tiles are now in the GIS for the historical imagery of Okaihau, Otiria, Kawakawa and Moerewa to add to the ones of Kaikohe that I already had but haven't done any work with yet. What I did get done apart from that in the last few days was the map of the Marsden Point corridor.

The Marsden Point line has been an idea in one form or another for over 100 years. Back in 1914, the government at that time surveyed a branch line to Waipu, which is a township south of Ruakaka. Construction works were undertaken over the subsequent ten years, but the line never opened. I don't have any information on the route it would have taken; it is possible it could be partly the same as the Marsden Point corridor, but since State Highway 1 is there today, we don't know if any construction works are still visible or have been absorbed into the highway or other roads after such a long time. Anyway it was abandoned.

The idea of building a line to Marsden Point itself has existed since the 1970s with the oil refinery for NZ developed there in the early 1960s. Firstly there was an idea to bring coal in to run the Marsden Point power station which had up to then run on oil, because the cost of oil had gone up, and then the development of the port was also considered in 1979, but as the port did not really get up and going at that time, there was still no real justification for a railway to be built. The NZR proposal for the line, produced in 1981, came up with a scheme for building a line which would have needed five rail bridges, two road overbridges and a tunnel. 

Nothing more was heard of the idea until the early 2000s when Northport (Marsden Point) began to be developed as a replacement for the port of Whangarei. The development of the new port did not include the rail line link. Another feasibility study suggested that a 16 km branch line would be needed at a cost of $87 million. Further work was undertaken between the various parties with ONTRACK to resolve various questions and challenges and get a business case together. When Port of Whangarei finally closed in 2007 there was still no rail line, but at that time Northland Regional Council was buying up the land needed for the corridor. This was followed by ONTRACK in 2008-9 formally designated the route as a rail corridor.

However in late 2008 there was a general election and the pro-rail Labour government was defeated at the elections and replaced by a National Government which immediately put a lot of constraints and limits on rail development in general, and Kiwirail was required to stop a lot of projects they had underway at the time and develop a turnaround plan to make the business profitable. This proved to be impossible to achieve and the government continued to fund Kiwirail's losses, but the rail network around the country was run down during the nine years National was in office, and there was no more work done at that time on the Marsden Point line, whilst other parts of the Northland rail network were reduced or mothballed during that period. 

With a change of government in 2017 to a Labour-Green-NZ First coalition, work has been picked up on the Marsden Point route, now expected to cost around $200 million. In addition, funding of $600 million has been provisionally allocated to renovate the rest of the Northland rail network up to 2020, subject to the business cases being developed. Another round of geological testing was completed earlier this month on the Marsden Point corridor whilst the design work and business case are being developed. This will then lead to tenders being called for the work, and if everything goes well we possibly could see the first sod being turned by the end of this year.

Because the corridor survey data has yet to be input into the Linz property parcels database, these maps are based on the map released about 10 years ago which only gave a general idea of the corridor location. Likewise the shape of the junction at Oakleigh is a question, it will probably be a triangle but I don't know what curve radius they would use. The curve I have drawn is around 200 metres radius. I can't imagine less than 150 metres radius being used for this curve; that would limit trains to a speed of 45 km/h at the junction, which is probably still quite reasonable, as they may end up being stopped for signalling purposes there anyway. 

The first four images are Oakleigh station, with the historical image from 1982. Oakleigh was only ever a fairly small station with a dogbox station shelter, goods shed, loop and stockyards siding. None of that exists today except for the dogbox which seems to have survived.

So far as the Marsden Point line goes we'll start by looking at the junction. Here I have drawn a curve at about 200 metres radius and it ends up crossing the swamp, which really can't be avoided for a triangle junction, with the amount of swamp in the vicinity of the station.  After that we would expect the route to be reasonably close to the highway so as to make construction through the swamp reasonably easy.

We continue alongside the highway for the next map.

 Once we are out of the swamp then the railway can take a straighter route than the highway, which is following a historical alignment that curves around. The land at this point is rolling fields so there is not really much to see at this location.

 The highway has straightened up and come back in parallel to the rail corridor along this section. The corridor would go south of what looks like a limeworks quarry here.

More of the same in this segment.

 Here we have zoomed out a lot to cover a lot more distance, specifically where the line turns and crosses a hilly section of ground. This is probably where NZR in 1981 thought they should have had a tunnel. The current thinking seems to suggest this will be a cutting instead. However there are questions over the stability of the hill, and one could assume NZR thought that a tunnel (perhaps built as cut and cover) would have been a better idea to deal with landslips in cutting walls.

The last piece shows Marsden Point and roughly where the line will finish up, next to State Highway 15A. This highway was built within the last decade and does not appear on the late 2000s map that I copied the rail corridor from.

North Auckland Line [1A]: Opua-Kawakawa 1: Opua 1

So as I have done the first set of maps for the two lines north of Otiria, here they are. The ones for Opua are relatively easy because the base imagery from Linz is available in 0.1 metre resolution, which is also available for Kaikohe, the next station we will look at, but not for any of the other four stations - Okaihau, Otiria, Kawakawa or Moerewa. At the same time as typing this I am about to extract the sectioned layers for those four stations from a 15 GB mosaic image (the biggest one I have ever worked on, which used 68 GB of memory/swap resource on the computer that was editing it). Anyway here is Opua.

All I can really tell you about Opua is that it has changed a lot over the years and I will try to document that but I only have done maps at this stage for the last 44 years. 

For a historical perspective here is the first Opua station yard which is quite detailed and it is dated 1950. I will eventually be drawing a map of this but that will come later. So you can see there was an engine shed as well as the turntable and the original station building.

Opua wharf in 1975. The tracks at that time were still connected up and probably still used to load ships at that time.

 Opua wharf 2014 much modified for the marina. Although track is still in place it is disconnected, and the only ships that come into Opua apart from ferry services, fishing boats and yachts, are mainly cruise ships which anchor offshore and use launches to transfer passengers to shore.

 Opua main yard area 1975 (second station). The original layout had the railway facilities in against the hill as seen in the first picture. About the late 1960s the yard was completely changed to allow this big shed to be built, which was cut into the hillside, and I am presuming this shed belonged to the local harbour board, which probably also used most of the other unmarked sheds that can be seen. NZR at this time had a small station and goods shed, indicated by the S and G markings. Passenger services to Opua ceased about this time and were probably poorly used by the time this station was built, and there is no sign of a platform of any sort. Loading banks are another common yard feature that aren't obvious in this picture, and the size of the goods shed indicates NZR didn't handle much general freight at this time.

 Towards the left of this view of Opua (2014) we can see the site of the third Opua station, which is the one that the Bay of Islands Scenic Railway operated from 1985 to 2001. There are naturally questions as to how they chose this site but I would guess there had been changes made at Opua or that were being pushed through which meant they didn't have the ability to use the NZR station site a little further north, or decided this was a better site. In all probability they were already coming under the pressure that began to rear its head in the early 2000s to give up part of the station yard to other interests. Because LTSA forced BOISR to shut down in 2001 for failing to meet their safety obligations, commercial interests at that time moved in and occupied most of the land around the station and when BOIVR got going soon after they were forced out of Opua by the local council pandering to the commercial development interests, mainly boatyards and the marina development that can be seen. The turntable was taken out around 2006 and moved to Kawakawa where it is still used by BOIVR.

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This photo is from 1985 Whites Aviation and it shows that at that time possibly just before BOISR moved in that the station buildings at Opua appear to have gone and there were some other small buildings put on the station site plus a lot of carparking so evidently squatters had moved into the site by that stage. Probably a boat repair yard judging by the some of the stuff lying around. This appears to have been encouraged wholesale by local authorities in that era.

This is a Whites Aviation photo from 1986 looking over Opua from the west and what we can see is a jetty has been built out into the sea that was not even there in 1985 so as soon as NZR moved out the squatters moved in, this is the same everywhere, commercial interests and local councils bullying government agencies for land. So that turn of events would have pretty quickly made sure the use of the second railway yard at Opua would have not been available to any new owner of the Opua railway. To the right of the big storage shed you can see J 1211 with some rolling stock because the Bay of Islands Scenic Railway had taken over the line at that stage and was running J 1211 in the summer of 1985/86 on the line. So their terminus was up by the turntable where by that stage they had built a small platform for the passengers.

The black and white 1975 image doesn't show much that hasn't already been covered so I will just refer here to the obvious views, the turntable and most of the area that BOISR was using has all been taken over for a marina as they were bullied out by local commercial interests supported by the local council that took over the Far North District Council.This appears to be before Wayne Brown was first elected as the Mayor (John Carter came along later) but of course decisions are made by a full council which in a district like Far North would be dominated by right wing people. Neither of Brown nor Carter have been particularly friendly to railway development so far with Brown in particular pushing for the Northland Regional Council to be abolished and still ranting against the regional council to this day and Carter calling for a large unitary council as opposed to the smaller FNDC unitary authority that Brown wanted. The only good thing is Brown has now changed his tune and wants the railways in the north to be developed to help his business interests but if NRC had been abolished as he wanted that would have been a big blow to railway development as at that time they were instrumental in getting work started on the Marsden Point corridor.

What still remains at Opua is the platform and the tracks just behind it where BOISR used to run into but the platform now has a building that has been put on top of it and whilst the track is still there it isn't accessible by trains any longer. And the turntable pit has been filled in to make a carpark.

Again we will consider both photos together. This area of land was actually a causeway for the railway because the bay area was filled in sometime in the 1960s going by the Whites Aviation photos and as seen 1975 it seems at that stage to have been filled in relatively recently at that time. Nowadays it is all boatyard and the problem for BOIVR is that the boatyards took over the rail corridor just as soon as BOISR was closed down and whilst you in fact still can find the railway line going along the route that it used to take it is all being squatted on.

Again looking at both photos.  This is basically the limit of the 1975 aerial photos (it's possible there may have been more area covered by some of the other photos in the series, but I always choose just the minimum number needed to cover a yard to reduce my workload). And already in 1975 there was a boat yard established on the foreshore and the NZR would have had issues with stuff being dragged across the tracks by boatyard people. The 2014 photo shows the boatyard now much bigger and squatting on the rail corridor although the tracks are still there.

This photo shows where BOIVR have been pushed back to, the outskirts of Opua. BOISR was closed down by LTSA in 2001 for failing to meet their safe certification requirements, as the track had deteriorated by that time significantly over 15 years. BOIVR got going not too long after that, but by but as the big bridge at Taumarere needed major repairs, they got bullied out of the Opua site so they took up the turntable and moved it to Kawakawa in 2006. Then under the Key National Government there were cycleway developments so whoever was the mayor at the time (either Brown or Carter) bullied BOIVR into turning the line beyond Taumarere into a cycleway and the track was buried under a layer of gravel and dirt to let the cycleway go through to Opua. Eventually BOIVR were allowed to put together a proposal for a new station at Opua so this is the site and it will be developed when funding becomes available. With the funding available under Labour/NZ First it seems quite likely they can get Provincial Growth Fund money to make the development happen and the Taumarere bridge has been fully repaired so all they need now is to get rid of the cycleway. However the Whangae Tunnel will need repairs as well so perhaps they will need time to assess the work and extend their funding application there also.