Stillwater Ngakawau Line [0A]: Volume 8 Progress Report 1

Last time anything got written on this blog about Stillwater-Ngakawau Line or Volume 8 was more than two years ago. Volume 8 is going to be like all of the other volumes, completed this year in some form, and being in the South Island will be a higher priority than anything in the North Island. It is second in line at present after Volume 9 (Midland Line).

SNL was one of the first volumes where we were beginning to use the Linz aerial photography as a source and background for the maps. So we have all this aerial photography that was downloaded at the time, but it is just the raw downloads from the LDS website that are of large areas and one of the first tasks to be completed with it is to pull out just the specific layers that are needed for the actual maps. So there are 24 GB of downloaded layers to look through and that would be expected to come down to maybe 1 GB actually needed in the maps.

At the time there was no Retrolens content released for the Westland area; now that there is, we will get some historical map mosaics created for a small number of stations. Stillwater is an obvious one but the NZR corridor survey for Stillwater to Westport is only partly available at the moment, from Ahaura to Waitahu. So we can make maps for the likes of Ikamatua, Maimai, Tawhai and Reefton from this 1980s coverage, maybe Inangahua, and possibly Stillwater itself with the help of research information. There is good enough coverage of Mackleys probably, but not further into the Gorge before Westport.  Coverage of Westport is high quality (for the town planning) but not Railway specific. Going north there is patchy coverage of various locations some of which may be mappable, including the Denniston Plateau, Ngakawau, and Seddonville. Coverage of the Cape Foulwind Branch vicinity is insufficient to be of assistance to the mapping project considering that it closed in the 1930s (although the rails remained in place for many years afterwards), most areas being only covered with low resolution imagery from 1955 at the moment, so we do not expect to be able to add any detail to the maps for this route. There is some historical coverage available for the Blackball Branch and Roa Incline which will enable the route to be traced more accurately, but not sufficiently to detail much of Blackball station at the present although this needs to be checked further.

The last post for SNL maps in September 2017 said that the maps were completed at that stage. Looking at them today, there is a bit of work needed, just to check alignments and general details. We have not researched any of the SNL at this stage and are not presently planning to do so as there is no real schedule for additional research at this time, except for research already done into Mackleys some years ago and recently refreshed, which has not yet yielded any track diagrams. 

Conns Creek at the foot of the Denniston Incline in 1946 with various rakes of wagons visible. The Incline went uphill in the top right hand corner of this image. The Incline and the Conns Creek Branch were both closed to traffic in 1967.

Waimangaroa as seen in 1946 with the Conns Creek Branch heading off the Seddonville Branch at lower right. The Seddonville Branch was closed beyond Ngakawau in 1981 except for the short section from Seddonville to Mokihinui Mine that closed in 1974. Subsequently the Ngakawau Branch was incorporated into the former Stillwater Westport Line to create the Stillwater Ngakawau Line. Coal mining at Denniston itself continued for many years after closure of the Denniston Incline, the output being brought by road to Waimangaroa to be loaded on the "East Backshunt" which was the first section of the former Conns Creek Branch. It was not until the late 1990s that Solid Energy finally ceased mining at Denniston but Waimangaroa was closed several years earlier and the last few years of coal production was trucked to Ngakawau to be loaded with the Stockton output.

Ngakawau in 1946. At this time the Charming Creek railway was still open and ran off the end of the Ngakawau mine siding centre bottom of this image. The bridge across the Ngawakau River was a combined bridge until the 1930s when a separate highway bridge was built for the first time. Ngawakau station itself closed many years ago and the entire line is just a very long siding for the Stockton Coalfields output loaded at Ngakawau from the aerial ropeway. The aerial coverage of Stockton itself shows the old mining railway quite clearly so we may yet map this area and there is also good quality coverage of Denniston Plateau that will be of interest also.

The fledgling township of Inangahua in 1943. The railway was still under construction at this stage and the various buildings and sites scattered along the corridor are very likely associated with this work.

Last one for today is Reefton 1986.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [19]: Seddonville Branch & maps completed

Having finished drawing the maps of this route here are some maps of different areas to finish this series of posts. Some of these have minor errors in them that have been corrected in the maps but I haven't regenerated these images.

 This one is specifically of the Charming Creek Mine tramway which is now a walkway but it also shows part of the Stockton Railway that was built for coal mining, and to its left the current aerial cableway that carries the coal down from Stockton at the present time.

 This is of the Denniston Plateau and it shows the aerial cableway that operated for 15 years as well as the roperoads and the major mines of the area.

 This one shows the area around Waimangaroa including the Koranui Incline and the Denniston road and bridle track, also the Denniston Incline.

 This shows the full Stockton railway, some of the haulage roads for the mines in the area, the Millerton incline haulage roads etc.

 Here we can see the route of the Stockton railway and the aerial cableway. At the bottom edge we can see the township of Millerton.

 This is detail of Millerton and the incline and haulage tramways (rope roads).

This is Ngakawau, the terminus of the Stillwater Ngakawau Line. This started out as a station 2/3rds of the distance from Westport to Seddonville (the distance shown is the distance on the Seddonville Branch) but has become now the end of the SNL. The bridge that until 1981 took the line across the Ngakawau River to Seddonville can be seen. This was built and used as a combined road and rail bridge until some time in the 1930s. Where the line ends is where the Charming Creek walkway starts. We can also see where the Stockton tramway started and went through a tunnel as it climbed up the hill. Unlike the incline at Millerton which was a rope road with an endless cable that hauled the coal skips down to the Granity station, the Stockton tramway was a normal rail line (narrow gauge) hauled by electric locomotives with overhead collection poles. It was used until the 1950s when the aerial cableway was put in.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [18]: Finishing off the SNL

It's obvious that things have slowed down a little bit lately. This has been due to having to address some unplanned issues elsewhere. Whilst there is room for some regret that the work slows down during these times, it's fortunate that I have got some leeway with the dates when I originally thought that the map drawing would all be finished by the end of this year. However, it is undeniable that finishing the maps next year will be slower than the past few years. It may well be that the pace is similar to what has been happening for the past few weeks. 

I have finished drawing the maps for the main line all the way to Mokihinui Mine. What has been happening more lately has been adding a few other details here and there such as mining sites and infrastructure. This is still happening slowly and it will take time to finish looking at Ngakawau, Stockton and Millerton as well. 

Software wise the main work of the maps project is still happening with Qgis 313ec55 now built from source on a Debian 9.1 vm which does everything really well with no real issues. I am still experimenting with later builds of 2.99 but there is a memory usage problem with the most recent releases that makes it difficult to draw maps off aerial photos. Fixes can take a while to come through so I am waiting for this to be addressed hopefully soon.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [17A]: Westport Harbour and Cape Foulwind Branch

Whilst I have taken a break from this for a few weeks to draw the Nelson Section maps, I am now back into it and pushing the maps up to the 150 km peg just beyond Waimangaroa. But that part will have to wait until the next post, right now this post is about the Westport area, and parts immediately both to the east and west of Westport. This post has actually taken a couple of days to write. The text only took a couple of hours work but the maps took a lot longer because of discovering and documenting bugs in the software. Due to lack of time therefore this post has been split into two parts, the rest of the maps and photos will be in the second part.

That part to the west consisted of the Cape Foulwind branch line, which started its life as an industrial railway built by the original Westport Harbour Board in 1886 and its key purpose was to carry stone quarried from the cape to Westport where it was used to build the harbour moles on each side of the harbour entrance. To this end, trestling was built out into the sea and the rocks were tipped each side of the trestle until it was buried. This system was used to build up moles (or breakwaters) at the entrance to a number of harbours around NZ, the ones that immediately come to mind are Greymouth, Gisborne and Whanganui and probably some others as well. Filling in trestles by tipping from wagons was also how big railway embankments, generally on main lines, were built during line construction where the PWD had locomotives available (branch lines were often built by purely pick and shovel work especially in the 19th century) in the days before heavy road building machinery was able to do these tasks.

To get the railway from Westport to Cape Foulwind and also access the railway to the mole on the far side of the port, a large bridge across the Buller River had to be built. Some considerable number of years ago I researched the extent and history of all the combined (road and rail) bridges on the Coast and from this I gleaned the information that the bridge was completed in 1888 (so the railway was built first) and it cost 14,000 pounds, or in today's money, about $3 million. It was 1040 feet long (316 metres) which consisted of 13 spans each of 80 feet and it had wooden piles founded into the river bed, while the spans were made of wrought iron.

John McLean & Sons were the contractors who built the bridge (and possibly may well have built th rest of the railway) and they had their own interesting history; most notably as the company that started the construction of the Otira tunnel, which bankrupted them. The company had a long history in NZ with the McLean brothers having emigrated to NZ in 1860 originally from Scotland via Nova Scotia (Canada) as members of a Presbyterian religious community known as "Normanists", after its founder, Norman McLeod. John McLean set up his firm in 1870 and it was taken over by the sons, Neil and Murdoch, in 1886, so this bridge contract was one of their first undertakings as the heads of the business. They went on to become quite a major company and had their share of successes and failures; they built part of the Rotorua branch line and the Makarau tunnel on the North Auckland line. The Makarau tunnel, which is still in use today, was built through extremely treacherous ground (Onerahi Chaos) and resulted in the company petitioning Parliament to be released from its contract - a similar scenario to Otira. After the failure of the business at Otira, the brothers continued in contracting but on a much smaller scale; Neil McLean retired in 1921, whilst John died in 1917.

The Buller Bridge was opened to road traffic as well as the trains carrying their loads of rock to the eastern mole of the harbour. Periodically these were extended and there were major projects for this work on several occasions, the most recent occasion being in 1967. The harbour was carrying a heavy volume of coal exports for as long as the Stillwater Westport Line was incomplete; the coal was mostly mined in the various settlements east of Westport and transported via the Seddonville branch line to Westport for shipping. When the SWL (or as we know it today the SNL, the subject of this series of articles) was finally finished in December 1943, the future decline of Westport as a harbour was almost guaranteed. This was further aided by the realisation, which still took a further number of years to be accepted, that the massive sediment flow passing northward up the coast across the harbour entrance built up the seabed at a far greater rate than dredging could ever hope to reverse, and building longer moles out into the sea was but a stopgap measure until the channel captured by the new extension also filled up.

For some numbers, it has been estimated within the first 50 years of building the harbour that every year some 500,000 (yes, half a million) cubic metres of material was building up on the seabed near the harbour entrance. 1 cubic metre is a volume of 1000 litres. The result over the same period was that the shoreline advanced on average about 7 metres a year. Hence, it has been realised that the harbour in its present location could never hope to remain deep enough to accommodate larger ocean going vessels for very long. There have been a number of subsequent proposals for a new deepwater port at Westport, most recently in the late 1980s when the then Labour government decided in favour of rail. Since then the port has declined further and Holcim closed down their Westport works a couple of years ago as it was becoming difficult to ship cement out of the port.

The economic decline of the West Coast as a whole can be firmly cemented to this lack of suitable deepwater ports. There is a fond notion in NZ's rail industry that land based transport is a viable means of supporting the West Coast and that this mode should prevail against shipping alternatives. Unfortunately it is a fact that whilst rail is certainly cheaper than road transport for volumes, land based transport is always going to be more expensive than sea at very large volumes. Rail is the only option at present for the West Coast in the present day scenario where politicians have been unwilling to fund the development of viable West Coast ports, but the development of the Stockton mine traffic has proved to require substantial investment in rail infrastructure that Kiwirail has been reluctant to fund because Solid Energy was unwilling to pay a reasonable rate of freightage on the coal traffic; SE in turn claimed Kiwirail's rates were too high over the long distance involved. Thus while foamers drool over the coal train traffic and the spectacle of five or six massive diesel locomotives (3300 hp each) in multiple that drag the heavy trains through the Otira Tunnel daily, the operation is detested by Kiwirail locomotive staff who have long lobbied for a new electrification project for the tunnel (which until 1995 had 1500 VDC overhead and five dedicated electric locomotives, abolished because they were incapable of dealing with the increased train size).

Anyway...the Westport Harbour Board after carrying out many of the early harbour works, ran out of money and in 1921 the harbour came under the control of the government's Marine Department. This resulted in the Cape Foulwind line being handed over to the Railways Department. The quarry lines having been extended as far as Tauranga Bay in 1914 with a tunnel; this extension closed in 1923, after the new quarry had helped contribute to an extension of the harbour moles by 600 feet each. NZR eventually decided the line was unviable as a general purpose passenger and freight railway, and closed it in 1930. It was then handed back to the Marine Department who continued to operate it until 1940. The Buller bridge needed major repairs in the mid 1920s with more piles driven, and again in the early 1950s. There was still track in place at this time but the bridge was now too weak to run trains and in all probability the rails on the bridge itself were taken up when the bridge was rebuilt because the decking had to be lifted to drive piles through, and a photo from that period shows no track. New decking was needed in 1968 and remediation of the trusses and piles was needed in the early 1970s. Work to build the present two lane highway bridge began in 1974 and took about two years; the old bridge was dismantled in 1977. The bridge spans have been kept on the Coast for other temporary projects. There was a second, much smaller combined bridge at Bradshaws Creek just west of the Buller River. A new road bridge was built alongside some years after the railway closed. The bridge itself was still there into the 21st century but is now gone.

Foamers have long suggested that if the cement works at Cape Foulwind had been built before the railway closed, the railway would have remained in use until the modern day. However, the cost of a new bridge across the Buller River, or maintaining the old one, for such a short run into the port of Westport, would likely have been considered uneconomic. Holcim only transported a small volume of cement long distance by rail. This product was trucked to the private siding just outside Westport (referred to in the last post in this series) to be taken across the Southern Alps to Christchurch. Most of Holcim's product has always gone by coastal shipping with their own fleet of cement carriers travelling around the country for many years. This system continues today except that the cement is imported from overseas to Timaru.

General overview of Westport. Note how much of the moles doesn't stick out into the sea, the constant flow of sediment around the entrance has built up a lot of land resulting in the difficulty of keeping the entrance into deep enough water.

The first part of the Cape Foulwind branch line with the two combined bridges.

Looking at the quarry section of the branch line, this was the main quarry where the rocks were loaded into the wagons. Machinery was based in there and several cuttings were made to get tracks in.

This is Tauranga Bay where a quarry was put in 1914 to get more rock. There was a tunnel put through. Apparently the tunnel is partially collapsed.

An overall map of the Cape Foulwind branch railway. Some of the sites formerly used by Holcim can also be seen.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [16]: Holcim Cement Siding

Holcim Cement (previously Milburn Cement and NZ Cement) has had a major presence in Westport for more than 50 years. It built a cement works at Cape Foulwind and used rail transport and coastal shipping to move the finished product around New Zealand. In the last 10 years the works have been wound down in favour of importing cement to a central distribution point (in the South Island this is based at the port of Timaru) and sending it around the country. Since Westport is a small town this siding is probably not now in use as it seems unlikely there would be a need to continue moving the cement into the area in sufficient quantities to justify the cost of the rail siding and plant.

So now I have around 32 km of line to finish drawing up. This however will take another week probably to finish as it involves also a number of branch lines which are:

• Westport Branch as it is now known and the harbour board moles
• Cape Foulwind Branch
• Conns Creek Branch
• Seddonville Branch beyond Ngakawau
• Mining tramways and related infrastructure

So the next week really WILL be spent on the Otago Central which I have to get finished for writing up and publishing.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [15]: Cascade

Cascade is the westernmost station within the Buller Gorge area, being 5.7 km east of Te Kuha. As such it was opened as part of the Westport Section, although Te Kuha was the railhead of the public network at this time and east of there the line was a construction section under the control of the Public Works Department. Rail operations at Cascade began in 1927 and a private siding was built to the nearby Cascade Coal Mine bins. The mine itself was well upriver, just below the Denniston Plateau, and a long flume was built to bring the coal down to the bins in the Buller Gorge. Given the proximity of the mine to the Plateau it must have been a separate operation from the Westport Coal Co that developed most of the Plateau mines - the well known Coalbrookdale mine was on the hill above Cascade. The siding closed in 1958 by which time Denniston Plateau mines were under the control of the Mines Department. NZR then used the siding for a time as a service siding.

 Cascade station.

 General overview of the Cascade area.

 Cascade mining camp 1945.

 (NZ Railways Magazine 1939)

 (1945)

Cascade Station 1945.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [14]: Tiroroa

Tiroroa is the first crossing loop west of Inangahua. It is deep in the Buller Gorge with no road access. It was first brought into use by the Public Works Department when railway construction reached this point in 1930, and handed over to NZR with the formal opening of the line between Inangahua and Te Kuha in December 1943. Surprisingly given its location, it was open to passengers until 1959 and to freight until 1978. This implied there must have been people living and working in the area, perhaps in logging, as maps do not show any coal mining in the immediate vicinity.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [13]: Rahui

Rahui is the next station west of Mackley Ballast Pit. It is a remote location in the Buller Gorge. It is recorded as having opened in December 1943 when the line was linked through the Gorge from the south. Although the PWD had constructed part of the line through the Gorge from the 1920s and had reached places further west there is no record at this time that Rahui was opened earlier. Maps show that a coalmine and sawmill were located near Rahui and that tramways were installed for both operations. Nelson Creek Sawmilling are thought to have been active in the general area.

As an NZR station Rahui closed to general traffic in 1964 but was retained as a crossing loop until 1982. There was no road access to the area so the traffic was probably solely from the mine and mill. There was access by foot to the area via a suspension bridge near Berlins, this was removed many years ago. Any rail freight for this lightly populated area was probably via the Inangahua station. Small coal mines also existed in the vicinity of Berlins at this time.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [12A]: Inangahua Junction Combined Bridge

As we all know there are various locations around the country where, to save on the construction costs of bridges, railway and road bridges have been combined on the same substructure (foundations and piers). The earliest bridges of this type also had a combined single level deck which was essentially a road deck with rails added to the top. The best known example was the Rakaia River bridge over 1.6 km long. New road and rail structures replaced the old wooden bridge there in 1940. Although by the time of writing this type of bridge is about to disappear completely on the KRL network, two bridges of this type are still in use for both purposes on the Taieri Gorge Railway.

The next design iteration produced bridges with separate decks on two levels. All examples of this in NZ have been with a road deck at the lower level and a train deck at the upper level. The three bridges of this type are at Awatere on the Main North Line (rail remains on the upper level with the lower deck removed), Karangahake on the route of the former East Coast Main Trunk Railway route that was bypassed in 1978 (the lower deck is still a road and the upper deck now carries a rail trail), and Okahukura (the lower deck is still a road and the upper deck now carries track for the Forgotten World Adventures rail carts operation). 

The third design has been constructing parallel decks on the same single level. There are three bridges of this type in New Zealand. The bridge at Westshore (Napier) was started somewhat earlier than the Inangahua one; both were completed in the 1920s. At Westshore the bridge carries the disused PNGL alongside a closed road. At Inangahua the road was completed first, the rail tracks had to wait until the 1930s to be completed. The third bridge of this type completed in 2006 is at Arahura on the Hokitika Line. There, a new two lane traffic bridge and rail bridge side by side replaced a single deck wooden combined bridge.

The Inangahua bridge was significantly damaged in the Murchison Earthquake of 1929 when the piers were badly cracked. The repair consisted of casting larger diameter piers around the damaged lower portions of the originals. Further damage was experienced in 1968 due to the Inangahua Earthquake. However unlike the single deck combined structure at Landing to the south, which was patched up until it could be replaced 14 years later, the Inangahua bridge was able to be successfully repaired. It still operates today for both forms of traffic and there are no known plans to replace it on either level.

A couple of archival photos of the Inangahua bridge after the 1929 Murchison earthquake showing the damaged original piers. The road deck was on the bridge, but the rails had not been added at this time. The bridge girders for the railway line were built by Andersons Engineering in Christchurch and railed to Inangahua, where the PWD had a narrow gauge tramway that they used to bring the parts up to the site. Probably they would have strung a cableway across to help move the spans into place. This was completed in the 1930s. 

Taken at the north end of the bridge we have the road and rail decks side by side.

Looking down the side of the road deck from the south end we can see the larger diameter of the lower piles as they were recast to repair the earthquake damage. As can be seen in both this photo and the archive one the road deck is essentially cantilevered over the side of the bridge piers with extensions to the upper sections. Although there could be many reasons for this, one possibility is that a narrower single deck layout was originally planned for the site. The construction of this bridge was started in 1923 only 9 years after probably the last single deck structure was completed at Parnassus on the Main North Line and the parallel deck structure may well have been a late design change.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [12]: Mackley Ballast Pit

A date of opening or closing is not currently recorded for this location. It was still open in 1981 when a metric distance of 99.75 km from Stillwater was recorded in the WTT. However the siding was shown then as "Private Siding" so whether it was being used for other purposes than the ballast pit, is unknown. The station was still recorded under its full name (as in the title of this article) at that time.

Mackley was not accessible from the south (railway east) until the bridge across the Buller River from Inangahua was completed, which from recollection (having previously researched Inangahua Station's history) was the early 1940s. It was used in conjunction with NZED's transmission line construction project based at Inangahua in the 1970s/1980s and this may be the use recorded in the WTT. I don't have any details of the ballast pit, when it was used or how it came to be named, but Mackley was also the name of the NZR's general manager in the 1940s. The river is marked on maps as "Orikaka or Mackley River".

The NZED has a substation at Inangahua where high voltage pyloned lines head due north. One single line on pylons heads east, initially alongside State Highway 6 and eventually reaches Blenheim. The second circuit is a pair of pyloned lines heading into the Buller Gorge which roughly parallels SH6, crossing first the Inangahua River (the township is on the east side of the river while SH6 is on the west side) then crossing the Buller River to parallel the railway for a short distance. The lines then turn north to run up the visible clear corridor that can be seen to the right of this image. This is a relatively short line run which ends at Waimangaroa having crossed en route the Denniston Plateau and the Mount William Range. A sawmilling company was operating for a short period (Orikaka Sawmilling) in the Mackley area in the 1950s.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [11]: Inangahua

This will be the last article in this series for a few weeks because I have to finish writing the first part of the Otago Central series to get it ready for publication.

Inangahua is a township between Reefton and Westport. It is at the junction of SH6 to Nelson/Westport and SH69 to Reefton. It was also planned as a railway junction. A rail line was planned to be built from Nelson to Inangahua via Murchison. Construction, however, was completed only as far as Gowanbridge, and trains were operated only as far as Kawatiri. The line was cut back to Glenhope during the Second World War and finally closed in 1955.

The main significance of Inangahua in railway terms was that it was the railhead from 1914 until the 1940s when the Buller Gorge section of the railway was finally completed, linking the isolated Westport Section to the national network. The township used to be larger when it was a NZED hub with staff housing. A transmission line was constructed through from Inangahua northwards over a number of years. Some of the houses remaining in the township date from the NZED era. 

Inangahua remains in use today as a crossing loop and has its station building remaining on its original site. There is a sawmill adjacent.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [10]: Cronadun

Cronadun is between Reefton and Inangahua. It opened in 1908 and has been closed to public traffic for many years, but remains in use today as a crossing loop.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [9]: Reefton

Reefton is the major intermediate station between Stillwater and Westport. The line was originally called the Stillwater Westport Line, as the line north of Westport was opened as the Seddonville Branch. The branch line north of Ngakawau was closed in 1981 and over time, as Westport dminished in importance, a bypass track was built to allow through trains to Ngakawau to bypass Westport, instead of needing to go into the station and reverse direction as they would have done when the line was originally opened. The name was then changed to Stillwater Ngakawau Line. Reefton is a major coal loading station. Of course there has historically been coal loaded at many different places between Stillwater and Seddonville and on the line today, the coal currently comes in at Stillwater, Maimai, Reefton and Ngakawau. 

Reefton showing the main coal stockpile and loading. At far right is the historic engine depot which has been restored by a local heritage group. In upper left is an old siding which went out to the Burkes Creek Colliery. This was worked by an old ex-NZR Single Fairlie locomotive R 28. The locomotive now resides on the riverbank at the south end of Reefton and is under a shelter. Plans are in effect for the same group that maintains the engine shed to restore R 28.

A full size view of Reefton with the full length of the Burkes Creek colliery line, the township's street layout and the location of R28 included. Burkes Creek is still an opencast coal mine and there are many mines around Reefton even today.

A large scale map of the Reefton area and with a bit more detail, the numbers are spot heights and show where the hills are. The Giles Creek mine is to the right and Maimai where the coal is loaded is just out of sight at upper left. As I noted on my post about Maimai this mine is actually closer to Reefton than Maimai, however there would have been less roading cost to get the coal out to Maimai.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [8]: Tawhai

Tawhai is currently the last station before Reefton. Its present facilities are a crossing loop and siding, however it is not a public station, so these facilities are for KRL purposes only.

Tawhai is. as a name, more commonly associated with the tunnel of the same name, which is the first tunnel on the Stillwater Ngakwau Line. The section of the railway between Tawhai and Reefton is known as the Reefton Saddle, and the tunnel is the summit tunnel of this hilly section of track. In steam days, Tawhai would have serviced steam locomotives on the Stillwater side of the saddle, as assisting or banking engines would have been added at Reefton for eastbound trains, and then taken off at Tawhai and added to the next westbound train to return to Reefton. In the earlier years of dieselisation, pairs of DJ locomotives were added to laden coal trains to get them over the saddle, so such a train would have two locomotives on the head and another two pushing in the rear.

No.1 or Tawhai Tunnel between Tawhai and Reefton.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [7]: Maimai

Maimai Siding is not too far south (east) of Tawhai, which is about 10 km south (east) of Reefton. The original Maimai station was at 31.2 miles and it was opened 1891 and served a sawmill. There was a ballast siding at the site which apparently closed 1914. I haven't located if there was a pit served by this siding and if so, where that pit was. The station closed completely in 1980.

The present siding points are a little south of the old station and were installed in 2008 when track was laid with a loading bank to serve coal traffic from the Giles Creek opencast mine. As detailed in a post on Enzed Transport four years ago the mine was first developed in 1984 and has grown to reach a 500,000 tonne annual output. Birchfield Coal which owns the mine wanted a siding put in to rail the coal out to customers. This siding was originally shorter than now and only served the loading bank which was made out of old steel highsider wagons. The mine is 15 km to the north making it nearer Reefton, bringing the coal out via Maimai avoids the need to bridge the Inangahua River.

When Birchfield won the contract to supply the Fonterra dairy factory at Darfield the site was redeveloped and the siding was extended considerably. The coal is loaded into open topped containers at Giles Creek which are taken by truck to the siding where they are lifted onto container flats. There are a few customers for whom coal is roadbridged using these containers, mostly various Fonterra facilities. For example the same system is used to load coal from Ohai in Southland which is railed to Temuka where the containers are roadbridged to the Clandeboye dairy factory which has no rail siding. The advantage of this system is that the special unloading facilities needed for the hopper wagons that are used by Solid Energy aren't required. The containers can be lifted off the wagons and then tipped to unload at the other end.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [6]: Mawheraiti

Mawheraiti has referred to three locations:

• The original station was located at 45.08 km, or north (railway west) of Bridge 48. It opened in 1891, and it was closed to all traffic in 1988. Bridge 48 crosses the Mawheraiti River.
• When the line was converted to Track Warrant Control about the same time as the original station closed, the name was applied to an Intermediate Board placed at 43.5 km, as shown in the map below. The location of this former board is about the same as the north (west) end of the new loop.
• The most recent use of the name is at the crossing loop located between the 42 and 44 km pegs as shown below.

Here's a map of the former station north of Bridge 48

The station building and a loading bank are still present at the site.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [5]: Ikamatua

This is Ikamatua at 35.38 km. There is a loop and siding here. There used to be a sawmill here and this may still be the case for all I know but the photo leaves sufficient ambiguity as to whether the mill still operates these days.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [4]: Pike River Coal Siding

This site near Ikamatua is where the Pike River Coal Company built its siding as part of its underground coal mine development nearby. For the sake of completion I have also included photos or maps of their two other sites.

I don't normally comment politically on this blog but have made an exception as you can see near the bottom of this post. For now here is the photo of the siding itself and the description.

The siding was built as part of the development of the Pike River coal mine in the hills above Atarau. This mine exploded in late 2010 and killed 29 mine workers whose bodies are still in the mine as there was too great a hazard to extricate them. There were only two shipments of coal made from the mine although each would have required multiple trainloads so it isn't clear how many trains used the siding.

The siding is very unusual both for NZ and for coal loading sidings. A balloon loop is the more commonly used arrangement, however not one coal siding in NZ uses one. The Port of Lyttelton used to have a balloon loop for unloading but it was removed some years ago to make more room for coal, although it could be reinstated in the future. I think this circular siding takes up less space than a balloon loop and compared to the parallel loop at Lyttelton for the locomotives to runaround the train, the advantage of either a balloon or circular layout is not having to duplicate the track. The siding as it is has a workable track length of around 1000 metres so it could handle very long trains, although coal trains on the West Coast in NZ have been limited to around 40 hopper wagons, which wouldn't use half of this siding. Longer trains could run if they were split at Otira because of the practical limits imposed by the Otira Tunnel, so a train from Ngakawau and a train from here could have been joined together, in theory, assuming they could get to Otira.

The loading siding was one of the mine assets purchased from the receivers by Solid Energy when the mine closed down, and SE planned to keep the siding mothballed for future use if other coal mines were developed in the general area. However when SE itself went into liquidation the site was sold and dismantled.

 Coal preparation plant. Coal was slurried down from the mine in a slurry pipeline and was on reaching this location, dewatered and then stockpiled and loaded into trucks for the trip to the loading siding. The other main facilities here were the security checkpoint and the bathhouse, as the road from here was private.

 The mine office near the entrance. Some of the buildings have been kept as part of a memorial.

 The mine entrance and part of the underground drift into the mine.

 The vent stack near the mine entrance. This was where the smoke and flames were seen when the mine caught fire after it had exploded several times. The GAG from Australia was brought in to extinguish the mine which was then sealed up.

 The overall area of the mine property within the dotted line.

Overall view of the mine facilities from the mine itself in the Paparoa Ranges down to the loading siding at Ikamatua.

Now there has been a great deal of controversy over the dogged persistence of some of the miners' families to demand the mine be reopened and the bodies recovered. Whilst I agree with the view of some experts and the line currently taken by the government that the mine is too dangerous to open, the wider context has to be seen. NZ does not have a corporate manslaughter law and the government refused to introduce one. Also a number of key mine management staff were not prosecuted and as far as I can recall the health and safety case only prosecuted the Pike River company but the parent company used the receivership to conveniently limit their payout. The board of directors also escaped prosecution despite their legal liability for H&S. The government also had blood on its hands as the health and safety system in NZ was manifestly inadequate to ensure the mine was properly supervised by government agencies. 

Compare that with the UK where because of Grenfell Tower there will likely be corporate manslaughter charges against the Kensington and Chelsea Council and the tenant management organisation. In Christchurch we have our own equivalent the CTV building that collapsed killing 115 people and for which no one has yet been prosecuted. One gets the impression the government has wanted to sweep Pike River under the carpet as it was politically inconvenient for them to be blamed for the inadequate mines management regime that existed at the time although the requisite minister did resign their portfolio.

So I am fairly sympathetic to the mine families although I don't think the mine should be reopened.

Stillwater Ngakawau Line [3]: Totara Flat

Totara Flat is the second operating station on the SWL after Redjacks and like that location it is a crossing loop. It is at the site of the former public station of Totara Flat that is just a bit south (east in railway terms) of Ikamatua and was open between 1890 and 1982. Passenger services ceased in 1967 when they were withdrawn from the entire line.