New rail bridges at Ohau Point

According to NZTA's newsletter, 

Six new road and rail bridges are being built near the largest landslides that came down near Ohau Point north of Kaikoura. The bridges are being built to span areas where loose material from slips high in the mountains is being washed down to the coastline. As construction ramps up, five crews will be working on all six of the bridges. Next week piling cranes, piling hammers and a drill rig will begin arriving on site to install piles for the six bridges. They will be built at road and rail level with crews digging down to between 4m and 6m to create a space under each bridge for the material to flow out under. Each rail bridge will be 12m long and 4.6m wide, while each road bridge will span 18m and be 12m wide. 

Now from this I assume this means three rail bridges and three road bridges. The article doesn't say exactly where but it seems likely these three flows shown just south of 214 km. Basically out of sight to the left you have Bridge 116 and Tunnel 19. So I guess these may well be 116A, 116B and 116C but we will see what Kiwirail choose to call them.

MNL bridge 107 replacement

Photo: NZTA
Bridge 107 north of Kaikoura being replaced

Kaikoura Earthquake repair updates

I stopped posting the reports weekly as it was taking me a lot of time to pull all the bits out of them and illustrate, considering the information in them isn't always up to date and they tend to come out as much as a week after the stated date of publication.

The focus has all been on the highway with the well publicised closures of SH1 south of Kaikoura due to a big new slip between Puketa and Goose Bay. However there has been work on the Main North Line in particular at several overbridge sites at Parnassus, Waima and Oaro where a lot of repairs have been needed. Also the main line and loop are being relaid at Pines just south of Clarence where there is a big problem with an upthrust in the ground of four metres resulting in suddenly changed ground levels, this forced the track well off its normal alignment and has also affected the highway. The nearby Clarence River bridge which is quite a major structure needs significant work and the highway bridge was also affected. At Mangamaunu both the highway and the railway are being realigned around a major slip site, which I think means they are building new embankment and seawall probably. There are also five railway tunnels being repaired.

The aerial photos I have been making use of only cover a coastal strip (I had hoped they would include the inland highway route, unfortunately this is not the case) but Google Earth has updated its coverage for much of the area to cover the timeframe after the quakes, thus we can have a view of the whole route although their resolution is nowhere near as good. However the Linz photos do cover a stretch of SH1 between Hundalee and Oaro which is well separated from the railway line, this is really the only major route differentiation along nearly all of the Picton-Chch highway.

If you want to have a look at the Linz aerial photos yourself in a web browser this is pretty easy to do. Just go to the address below:

• https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/3529-kaikoura-earthquake-02m-aerial-photos-2016/

On the left side should be the description of the data layer -title is 

Kaikoura Earthquake 0.2m Aerial Photos (2016)

You can see near the top left an orange + sign. Just click that (it should then change into a red - sign) and the layer is loaded onto the map shown at the right. Then just drag, zoom, scroll etc that map until the section Parnassus-Ward comes into view and you should be able to see the aerial photos.

NZTA Earthquake Repair Update 31/3/17 [1]

The big news overall this week has been the closures of the highways because of weather related events. A closure of SH1 south of Kaikoura late last month was necessary in order to remedy new slips that had come down at a number of sites between Goose Bay and Puketa, as I have mentioned before. Just as the highway has reopened again the tail end of the Cyclone Debbie storm has caused more damage and forced it closed as there have been big mud slides at some locations. SH70 inland from Waiau to Kaikoura has also been hit by the weather and is open with restrictions at the present time.

Now for the key repair works and sites for this week.

This is the first big slip north of Kaikoura, just past 205 km on the MNL, and known to NZTA as "Site 1A". You can see here where a temporary road was put around the slip by crossing over the railway line. What's going to be happening here from this week is a new alignment of the road and railway line past this slip.

This is Half Moon Bay at MNL 211 km, just north of KRN Tunnel 18. This was originally one of the smaller slip areas with an estimated removal volume of 5000 cubic metres. However, due to the recent weather conditions, 10,000 cubic metres of material is currently being removed from the slip faces and this work will continue for the next few weeks.

Site 3 removal works last week (NZTA photo)

Work continues at the massive slip at Site 6 - Ohau Point. This photo is from a Beehive press release of about two weeks ago. (The railway is in tunnel at this location)

Site 7 is just north of Ohau Point at 214 km. Work is underway sluicing and scaling the slips to get the material shifted. The estimated total volume is 20,000 cubic metres.

Site 8 is just to the south of KRN Tunnel 20 and 217 km. The estimated volume to be removed here is 41,000 cubic metres making it one of the larger slips being worked on, and work has been happening here this week too.

Just north of MNL 259 km is the Waima Overbridge, known to KRN as Bridge 132. 

NZTA has had excavators at work at Waima digging out the culvert that carries the railway lane under SH1 at this location so that the structure can be repaired. 

I'll need to make another post to complete this update so that should be ready tomorrow.

Christchurch properties target of KiwiRail lease scheme following near miss

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/90922237/christchurch-properties-target-of-kiwirail-lease-scheme-following-near-miss

Selwyn-Rakaia on the Main South Line

This post covers the Main South Line between 46 to 69 km and the stations of Selwyn, Dunsandel, Bankside Loop, Bankside and Rakaia. Some of the maps are shown at full size while others are thumbnails. You can see the thumbnailed ones at full size by clicking on them.

Commencing at the Selwyn end we have Bridge 25 at the Selwyn River. The Selwyn River has been crossed by two railway lines in New Zealand: the Main South Line and the Southbridge Branch. The Whitecliffs Branch avoided a crossing by running on the east bank of the river between Glentunnel and Whitecliffs.

Selwyn station was located near the well known level crossing of State Highway 1. "Dates and Names" (J Scoble, 1982) records that the station opened in 1867, and was closed to freight traffic in 1940 and completely in 1963. It would therefore appear to be the case that the station's last role was for passenger traffic. The above diagram is based on the 1942 Canterbury Maps aerials and therefore would show the station as a passenger only facility. There were no other buildings visible on the 1942 image but there is reasonable certainty of the siding for the goods yard that must have been on the north side of the line. Selwyn was originally known as Selwyn South; Norwood was originally known as Selwyn North. The location of a station called Selwyn Bridge is currently unknown, but may have been nearby. Scoble records that it was open for a six month period in 1867. The closing date of Selwyn Bridge coincided with the opening date of Selwyn.

Between Selwyn and Dunsandel are a number of small bridges.

Dunsandel is located at about 50 km, about 3 km south of Selwyn. Scoble says the station opened in 1873 and was closed fully in 1982. The main level crossing for the township originally was placed at Hororata-Dunsandel Road, to the east of the station, but since closure it has moved to Browns Road which passes through the former station site. The reason for this has not been researched but may have been to increase stacking distance for heavy vehicles at the crossing, taking advantage of a kink in State Highway 1 where it passed around the former railway yard. Because of this road going through the centre of the railway yard, this is the most likely reason why there are no substantial remains left at the site today.

 South (or west) end of Dunsandel.

The Tramway Road curve is a prominent feature of this map. The road was never more than a reserve so far as I know, insofar as no tramway was ever laid, but would have gone through to Southbridge. Tramway reserves are common around Canterbury, probably because it was settled around a time when railways had not yet fully taken over in the UK. Very few general freight tramways were actually constructed in the province, on the other hand bush and mineral trams existed just as they did in many other parts of the country.

Just past 53 km we have the Bankside Crossing Loop. Scoble does not record any details of this location. It is approximately 1200 metres long so can cross very large trains.

Bankside Crossing Loop is the second location to use the Bankside name but is several kilometres north of the old Bankside station, which is covered below.

Between Bankside Loop and Bankside, there has been established for about ten years the Synlait Dairy Factory. Although it must have been established near the railway line strategically, it does not use the railway at present. Because of the heavy road traffic accessing the plant, the roading and rail layout at this point have both changed. The former level crossing of Old South Road was moved to Heslerton Road and the railway line was diverted to increase the stacking distance for vehicles between the railway and the Main South Road intersection.

At about 59.5 km we have the original Bankside station. According to Scoble it opened in 1880. Passenger traffic ceased in 1966 and it was fully closed in 1970. The highway was originally diverted around the station but since closure, the highway has been straightened which puts it on the alignment of the former station access road. Like Dunsandel, this is probably the reason there are no substantial remnants obvious today.

Bankside was the site of a railway ballast pit. Just when this was in use is not clear but a reference has been found to it from the Papers Past website when a coronial inquest was held into the death of a railway workman there in 1905.

One of the more interesting features of Bankside is its role during World War II. Due to the threat of a Japanese invasion in 1942, the Government decided to increase the number of airbase facilities in New Zealand. Bankside was chosen as the location of a secret fuel dump known by the codename AR16. A large bunker was constructed to hold a fuel tank with a capacity of 750,000 gallons (about 3.4 million litres) which was served by a railway siding from Bankside station. Fuel from trains was pumped via a pipeline into the tank, and was discharged by another pipeline to a tanker loading bunker adjacent. The area was planted in pine trees for camouflage. The tank and all other equipment along with the siding were removed a few years later but the tank bunker is still intact today and is being reopened as a historical site.

The Bankside fuel depot was constructed as a reserve supply for the secret Te Pirita airfield which was built further inland near Greendale.

The airfield at Te Pirita was constructed secretly between 1942-43. There were three runways laid to service US bombers (B-17/B-24). Only a few test flights ever landed there and it reverted to farmland after the war. Until about 2008 it was still possible to determine the location of the runways quite clearly on aerial footage, however since then the land has been converted from sheepfarming to dairy production and most remaining traces are now gone.

The AR16 depot and adjacent land to the south of Bankside was pine plantation and became part of the Selwyn Plantation Board's holdings. In the early 2000s all the plantation was felled and the land converted to dairy production. This eliminated most remaining traces of the fuel depot apart from the tank bunker.

Continuing south from Bankside the railway line is crossed by Bridge 30, an overbridge of State Highway 1. This bridge appears to have been built as part of the replacement of the Rakaia River combined road-rail bridge with separate road and rail structures about 1940.

The Rakaia River railway bridge dates from around 1940 when it replaced a combined bridge. The original dated from the 1870s. It is the longest railway bridge in New Zealand at 1744 metres, with 143 spans.

Rakaia Station was to the south of the Rakaia River. Scoble writes that it opened 1873 and was closed to passengers in 1970 but does not record a date for the full closure. There was a siding loop which served several private freight depots at the south or east side of the line. There was also another siding to a premises just to the south or west of South Town Belt. I haven't drawn any proper diagrams because Canterbury Maps does not have any aerial coverage of most of Rakaia. There was formerly a road crossing the railway near Dunford Street (our family ancestors did have relatives who settled in the area so the street is probably named after them as our family's surname is very rare in New Zealand). This has been changed into a foot crossing in more recent years.

Rakaia was the junction station for the Methven Branch which closed in 1976. The kink in Thompsons Track where it formerly crossed the branch line has since been straightened.

As a family, for many years we used to travel on Thompsons Track from Rakaia to Ashburton Forks, where after crossing the North Branch Ashburton River bridge we would turn onto Ashburton Staveley Road to reach Staveley, where a group of our church families booked the Presbyterian-Methodist campsite for our New Year holiday for about ten years. During these times I remember the formation of the Methven Branch alongside the road almost as far as Lauriston, although it was probably pulled up by the time we first made the trip. Sometimes we did in fact take a different route from Christchurch through Yaldhurst, West Melton, Aylesbury, Charing Cross and Hororata, which featured three fords of the Hawkins, Waireka and Selwyn Rivers. All three of these rivers have been bridged in more recent years by the Selwyn District Council. This route was a shortcut onto State Highway 72, the inland route from Darfield to Winchester via Rakaia Gorge. It joined SH77 near Methven and SH79 at Geraldine. More recently the section of SH72 from Darfield to the Methven turnoff has been incorporated as part of SH77 going to Ashburton (whereas SH77 used to just go from Ashburton to Methven) and the part of SH72 south of Methven has been changed to a local road.

Anyway thanks to Philip Moore and his website nzrifle.com also Wings Over Cambridge and others for additional material and historical data about Te Pirita and the Bankside fuel depot.

The Historic Waiau Branch 1: Waipara [1]

The branch line to Waiau closed in January 1978 - almost 38 years ago. The 29.5 km section from Waipara to the Hurunui River Bridge was sold to the Weka Pass Railway which initially proposed to operate with an extension to the Hurunui Hotel. For various reasons these plans were soon abandoned and the line beyond the Highway 7 road crossing at Waikari was eventually lifted. The Weka Pass Railway now operates on the first 12.5 km of the former branch.

In 2015 the interest for all closed branches for railway enthusiasts remains in what can be traced on the ground. The main focus for the updating of the maps has been in the identification of historic rather than  currently present features. The maps will be presented in this series of articles along with some photos from my collection.

None of the maps feature detailed layouts of any station as this information is still to come with possibly historic aerial surveys to be obtained in the future and used as they have in some other places. The track diagrams produced by the NZ Model Railway Journal are however included.

We start traditionally from the junction end of the line, however the maps sequence on Flickr goes the other way because they are always arranged from north to south.

Waipara is the junction station and of course is still operational on the Main North Line. It is the base of the Weka Pass Railway. For Kiwirail its operational purpose nowadays is as a crossing location for trains. The Waipara township population was boosted significantly by railways employees at the height of operations in the 1970s because various maintenance gangs were based there. Even after the Waiau Branch closed these gangs still worked on the Main North Line and I remember in the 1986 census which I worked on that Waipara was really a railway town at the time. Since the reorganisation of the railways around that period, all of the railways employees got moved elsewhere. The township enjoyed a second renaissance of sorts when the Weka Plains irrigation scheme was developed in the Weka Pass bringing water into what was traditionally a very dry area. This kickstarted grape growing developments and lifestyle blocks and has boosted the area with vineyards.

Firstly we have four maps showing the historical track layout of Waipara. The current layout is not depicted and will be left for another time.

Starting at the south of the township just past the 62 peg the first siding started on the east side of the line. Highway 7 never crossed here originally because the junction with SH1 was further to the west, since until 1972 Highway 1 went through the township of Waipara.

On the next slide you see a few more sidings but not much else of note.

Here's the main part of the yard. We can now see a lot of tracks. At the south end the distinct group of tracks on the east side were for the locomotive depot. Then there is another group of parallel tracks on the west side and the gap in the middle was the island platform of the station. We can also see the turning triangle, and freight shed tracks, but unfortunately I have not marked any structure on this diagram. The cross track near the top of the diagram is misdrawn as it should actually show the footbridge.

Continuing to the northern end of Waipara we have the junction with what was the Waiau Branch and now is the Weka Pass Railway. There were several tracks alongside the first part of the branch which connected it into the Waipara yard. The present day junction is actually not as shown as the diagram is incorrectly drawn - the Weka Pass Railway line goes onto a siding before it joins the main line.

Today we are focusing on Waipara as it was in the mid 1980s. You will see some references to the Weka Pass Railway but that is not the primary objective of this post. Unless otherwise stated all photos are by myself.

The north end of Waipara seen in 1986 with a freight arriving from the north. The home signal is set at clear. At this time the station was still staffed by a traffic operator who attended for most trains but was not there all of the time. The branch line to the left is still as it was when the Waiau line was open with extra connecting trackage into the service sidings to the left.

A Colin Duthie photo at the north end of the yard shows the main line and loop and the original goods shed with loading bank to the right. In the distance is the Way and Works depot. The turning triangle is to the right with one leg visible behind the goods shed. This photo would probably be late 1970s.

Some of these photos which I scanned a very long time ago might get rescanned one day from the negatives. Anyway here we have the double slip that connected the triangle into the yard at the north end. The footbridge had been taken down by the time of this 1987 shot. The small white building on the right is the later goods shed.

Another small scan, this one taken 1985 is from the footbridge with a NZR freight coming through on the main. A couple of tracks over you can see some Weka Pass Railway rolling stock. In the distance, carriages are being turned on the triangle.

Taken the same day as the previous photo we can see the Weka Pass Railway turning their locomotives and carriages on the Waipara triangle.

The station footbridge seen in 1986. It was demolished soon after.

Looking across the apex of the triangle towards the station about 1987. The triangle was pulled up some time in the 1990s. The tracks ran out almost to the footpath at the side of the main road and there is still a narrow strip of the corridor left open today.

Late 1980s and you have the south end of the station platform. The tracks on the right side were removed early 1980s. At the platform is an excursion returning from Kaikoura.

Part of the way and works depot at the south end, here is the trolley shed.

Part of the works depot with a light track for material trolleys to be loaded.

Towards the south end and you can see the trolley shed in the distance.

I am considering rescanning some of the old photos to add to what can be seen here. In the meantime this is what is getting published today.