Goldfields restores Waitekauri bridge

This is from FRONZ Journal No.171

The bridge is a Howe truss, and typical bridges of this type which still exist around the country combine steel and wooden components. There are not very many of these Howe trusses left on active railways around the country, but there are a number in preservation.

Peketahi combined bridge being de-railed

This article is from the FRONZ journal No.163 published earlier this year.

The bridge as it stands was first constructed with the opening of the ECMT extension to Taneatua in the late 1920s and was a combined structure from the outset. With the closure of the branch line many years ago it has only been used for road traffic. It would seem rather unlikely the line will ever be reinstated and although technically just mothballed, with the passing years more and more of it progressively has disappeared. A section of track is currently operated by Awakeri Rail Adventures.

Why a Pokeno-Paeroa railway line makes no sense

Here is the statement from the 2014 election campaign manifesto where the party's rail policy was explicitly laid out.

5. Auckland-Pokeno-Paeroa-Te Aroha-Tauranga-Whakatane 
A new line to be built along the rail formation between Pokeno-Paeroa-Te Aroha, a new line to be built between Te Aroha and the western portal of the Kaimai tunnel and a new line to be built between Awakeri and Whakatane, all combined creating a shorter and more direct rail route into the Bay of Plenty.

The NZ First party has proposed the government build the previously abandoned Pokeno-Paeroa railway line which Labour completed formation works for in the 1930s but never laid track and bridges into. Much of the completed formation was subsequently taken over for the area's highway or has been redeveloped and therefore the re-establishment of such a project would have to re-establish virtually all of the formation works. To the best of my knowledge no bridge works or station construction was completed at the time so these facilities would all have to be built from scratch.

The main question is why duplicate the East Coast Main Trunk route via Hamilton when there is an extant former rail corridor from Waitoa to Paeroa that would provide a connection from an existing rail line rather than a completely new line, if having rail access to Paeroa were significant. 

So let's have a look in detail at the ideas that somehow we actually need this route given it was already evaluated and rejected more than 50 years ago in the process that led to the Kaimai Deviation being built as the replacement for the old railway line from Morrinsville to Paeroa and through the Athenree Gorge to Tauranga. 

First off it is highly misleading to suggest there is a rail formation just waiting to have tracks laid on it between Pokeno and Paeroa. As I have noted parts of it have certainly disappeared and no bridges and stations appear to have ever been built. Those latter items in particular will swallow up significant amounts of the total cost. 

Now for the route from Pokeno east, this is shown on this set of maps here. From Pokeno to Paeroa is about 65 km based on the 1930s route. Paeroa to Te Aroha on the old route closed in 1991 is 24 km. A new route from Te Aroha to the Kaimai Tunnel portal would be about 22 km based on the route the highway takes. Let's say it joins up at Hemopo. To get to the same location from Pokeno via the ECMT comprises 68 km from the proposed junction to Frankton, and 60 km from Frankton to Hemopo. So for the existing route you have 128 km from Pokeno to Hemopo vs 111 km via the proposed new route. This amounts to a 17 km saving in length which is hardly significant since you are duplicating the line and siphoning off traffic from the existing route. It is favourable to Auckland but not to Hamilton.

There will be claims that this route increases the capacity on one of our few freight lines that actually makes money. Whilst that is true, there are more cost effective ways to do that with the existing route without producing a separate and costly duplicate route. It is possible to increase the speed of trains somewhat, but there are also other ways to do that with existing infrastructure. 

The last part of the proposal is a new railway from Awakeri to Whakatane. This is in fact the Whakatane Board Mills siding and would connect to the existing disused branch line to Taneatua. Just why this is conjoined in a project for an entirely unrelated line to Paeroa is not particularly clear. There is nothing to stop this project from proceeding separately from the Paeroa proposal which it is completely independent from. However it requires a detailed evaluation to see whether the volume of freight relating to the Whakatane mill is significant.

If saving distance on the ECMT is significant about the same distance as the Paeroa-Pokeno line would save can be achieved by a deviation of a short part of the present ECMT at much less cost.

NEW RAILWAY BRIDGE JUST COMPLETED ACROSS THE OHINEMURI RIVER AT PAEROA, AUCKLAND PROVINCE [1926]

The new double track Paeroa bridge. The reason for a double track bridge was to allow the railway junction of the East Coast Main Trunk Railway and the Thames Branch to be moved to Paeroa Station for greater operational efficiencies. Previously this junction was to the south of Paeroa.

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19260429-38-7
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?BU=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aucklandcity.govt.nz%2Fdbtw-wpd%2FHeritageImages%2Findex.htm&AC=QBE_QUERY&TN=heritageimages&QF0=ID&NP=2&MR=5&RF=HIORecordSearch&QI0=%3D%22AWNS-19260429-38-7%22

THE ANGRY RIVER RUNNING HIGH AT THE PAEROA RAILWAY BRIDGE, WHICH WAS IN GRAVE DANGER OF DISASTER. [1924]

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19240417-40-1
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?BU=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aucklandcity.govt.nz%2Fdbtw-wpd%2FHeritageImages%2Findex.htm&AC=QBE_QUERY&TN=heritageimages&QF0=ID&NP=2&MR=5&RF=HIORecordSearch&QI0=%3D%22AWNS-19240417-40-1%22

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19240417-40-2
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THE RAILWAY BRIDGE ACROSS THE OHINEMURI [1912]

The first railway bridge at Paeroa was a single track Howe Truss seen here with the river in flood. The second bridge which was raised in height, was a double track steel girder bridge built in the 1920s.

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19120912-9-2

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East Coast Main Trunk (pt 2)

The first line I looked at when I decided to reinstate my web site was the ECMT on discovering new Google Earth coverage. Now having determined the very recent addition of CNES/Spot coverage to GE I went back and tidied up all the rest of the ECMT files as the whole of the area covered by the lines can now be viewed. (Incidentally Google is now purchasing coverage from all three of the major space imagery players: Digital Globe, Geoeye and Spot)

Some of the points of interest are summarised and depicted as follows:

1. The Mt Maunganui Branch

View Larger Map
Mt Maunganui Port has one of the most extensive siding developments of any NZ port (depicted in blue lines above). The green lines suggest possibilities for mainline deviations in several places. 

2. Whakatane Board Mills Line

View Larger Map

The Whakatane Board Mills line was a private industrial route from Awakeri (formerly ECMT and later Taneatua Branch) to the factory on the outskirts of the town. An exact date of closure is not clear but it became disused in the 1990s, latterly worked by Tranz Rail rather than the Board Mills company, and it has been lifted. Google Earth shows all the bridges in place but the date that the imagery was taken is unclear. It’s apparent the line could not ever be reinstated in the future as the land it ran on was not a properly designated rail corridor.

3. Taneatua Branch

View Larger Map

This map shows the overbridge which is a short distance east of Taneatua. Earlier in the 2000s, Transit NZ had repairs carried out to the bridge, and this has resulted in the bypass road that can be seen to the left of the bridge being built at that time. But now it is closed again, and this is rather a curious state of affairs overall. We now know that NZ Transport Agency which took over Transit’s role has a project on the books for this bridge, for which $500,000 has been allocated. But at this stage I cannot find out more about it. I would guess that the proposal will be to remove the bridge outright and take the kink out of the road by cutting straight across. A second proposal is to realign the highway alongside the rail route to bypass the township altogether (black lines on the maps show road options). Street View coverage of the Peketahi road rail bridge shows that the rail has been removed on the approaches to the bridge although it is still present on the bridge itself.

A date for the “closure” of the Taneatua Branch is also unclear because it has not been formalised. Rather than actually “close” some national network lines, they have simply been mothballed. But I would guess that the last train would have run sometime in the 1990s as well. Unlike the WBM line, the track has been mostly left in place. However Google Earth appears to show damage to a bridge near Edgecumbe. Youtube has footage of “wheel5800”s LIV trip up the Taneatua Branch in 2002 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)

Both of the Main Line and Other Lines files for the ECMT have been updated in this latest pass. As always I recommend you download the files from the site and open them in Google Earth if you want to see the most detail, as Maps does not reproduce all the colours properly.

Remnants of the old East Coast Main Trunk Railway

As Google Earth coverage keeps getting better, we keep discovering more about the geography of New Zealand, with one of my interests being former railway lines. There are still some areas of the North Island that use old Landsat low res coverage, I hope they will get some Cnes/Spot coverage soon. In a former life I was an avid railfan and drew maps of nearly every railway line in NZ, which are now to be found on Google Maps. Today I just happened to load up the map of the old East Coast Main Trunk line, and have had a look at some of this former route. I have got absolutely no intention of keeping these maps up to date in a major form as this requires many hours of work and I am disinclined to do any research, one of the great attractions of drawing the maps in the first place was that I did all the work at home on my computer and didn’t have to go anywhere else. However I have just chosen to pull up the old ECMT map because of the improvements and it has got a small makeover today, because some of the old bridges can now be seen in medium-high resolution coverage recently added. It is equally as clear that some locations that I thought would be bridges are culverts.

According to a file from the Western Bay of Plenty District Council the following remnants of the line are known to exist between Athenree and Apata. Their source is a 2002 report for the Historic Places Trust by Phillip Moore. Rather than embedding the maps into this blog post I have linked to maps of all the locations that I know of by converting the NZMS260 map references where these are given. There is one photo in that document of a concrete culvert where the road appears to go over the railway line. It isn’t identified but I assume it is Athenree Station.

1. Athenree Station (see below)
2. Athenree Station site – concrete foundations, rail formation, culvert near SH2,
plate layers cottages and Arden Cottage. [T13 E6903 N1177]
3. Railway Formation south of Athenree Road (800m) [T13 E6990 N 1153]
4. Prominent Cutting through hill (100m) [U13 E70021 N10383]
5. Concrete Culvert [T13 E69940 N10181]
6. Small Concrete Bridge Piles (Bridge No. 28) [T13 E69768 N09677]
7. Tuapiro Stream Bridge Abutment [T13 E6915 N0765]
8. Railway Formation south of Kauri Point Rd (800m) [T13 E691 N054]
9. Tahawai Stream Bridge (No. 35) Concrete Piers [T13 E6794 N0331]
10. McKinney (Tawherowhero) Bridge timber abutments (No. 37) [T13 E67833 N02574]
11. Uretara Stream Bridge (No. 40) timber abutments [T13 E67654 N00894]
12. Henry Road cutting and railway formation (200m)
13. Rereatukahia Stream concrete bridge (no.44) [T14 E67621 N98416]
14. Te Manaia Stream Timber Trestle bridge (no. 46)
15. Waitokohe Sream Timber Trestle Bridge (No. 48) and embankment (300m)
16. Aongatete River Bridge (No. 51) concrete and timber piers
17. Whatakao Stream Timber Trestle Bridge (No. 52)
19. Wainui River Timber Trestle Bridge (No. 56)
20. Apata Station Site – small station building
The Athenree Station is located at a new site at 360 Athrenree Road (Stewart Homestead). This site is encircled by a well known large horseshoe curve of the old railway route. I believe this is Street View’s view at the time of writing of the old station building. The photo is a bit dark but the building which looks just like a typical railway station is on the little rise about the centre of this view.
This post is not going to be a series of posts, nor is there going to be any more maps updated this year (if ever) because all this stuff takes forever to do. But if I had kept all the blog posts of the two former blogs that I used to write on this subject, I would gladly repost them herewith.