Wairio Branch

The Wairio Branch, now incorporating the Ohai Industrial Line, 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.

Construction

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 open up new land to settlement and agricultural use and 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 pointed 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 section of line from Makarewa to Invercargill was also incorporated into the Wairio Branch. This section of line is one of the oldest in New Zealand; originally built with wooden rails, it opened in 1864.

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 a privately owned extension of a little over two miles to the Nightcaps Coal Company in nearby Nightcaps, operated by the Railways Department. The roads in the Ohai area in 1909 were described as "unspeakably bad" in a publication of the Ohai Railway Board in 1925; although significant coal deposits were 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.

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 Railways Department stated that it would not permit its wagons to be used on the line after 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 X class tender engine and a W^AB 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. In the early 1990s, the Ohai line was incorporated into the national network and the line beyond Wairio became known as the Ohai Industrial Line. The motive power used on the line from this stage was the same as that employed to haul the train from Invercargill. Presently, one train runs every weekday from Invercargill and return, arriving at Ohai at 9.30am and leaving two hours later. This service operates on Saturdays and Sundays when required. In June 2007, the Southland District Council adopted a Regional Land Transport Strategy which included a provision to upgrade the Ohai line and maintain it as a viable alternative to road for bulk freight.^[1]

On 15 May 2008 Fonterra and Eastern Coal Holdings reached an agreement to continue to rail coal from Eastern Coal's Takitimu mining operations in the Ohai/Nightcaps district to Fonterra's Clandeboye dairy factory. Under this new contract, approximately 120,000 tonnes of coal will be carried annually by the Ohai line.^[2] After infrastructural upgrades such as a new rail load-out system were undertaken, the contract came into effect on 1 September 2008; to fulfil it, trainloads of up to 550 tonnes of coal leave the Branch daily.^[3]

The preservation movement

The Ohai Railway Board was closely associated with the railway preservation movement. Its former steam locomotives, X 442 and W^AB 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. W^AB 794 is currently in mainline operating condition and hauls heritage passenger trains in the North Island from its Feilding depot and hauling the Overlander express on "Steam Engine Saturdays". 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.

External links

• Ohai Railway Board Heritage Trust

References

1. ^ Amy Milne, "District council adopts road strategy", Southland Times, 12 July 2007.
2. ^ New Zealand Press Association, "Toll Carriage Of Coal Supply For Clandeboye May Spur New Line" (15 May 2008), accessed 16 May 2008.
3. ^ Jared Morgan, "Nightcaps Coal Rolling North To Feed Fonterra", Southland Times (12 September 2008).

• Churchman, Geoffrey B., and Hurst, Tony; The Railways Of New Zealand: A Journey Through History, HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand), 1991 reprint