Pike River Mine Tragedy

Well, when I wrote that last post Friday afternoon, I and most of NZ really had no idea how serious the situation was. But by Saturday I had a gut feeling that no one was likely to have survived the first blast. Pike River has been like no other similar event because it played out over a few days before reaching a dramatic conclusion mid-week. We waited and watched until, with the second explosion, the authorities determined no one could have survived.

My maps, shown in the previous post, have been updated to be a bit more useful and this one below shows more detail which was obtained from various publications on Pike River’s website.

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I personally think it likely that the mine will have to come under new ownership to continue. It was already in financial difficulty, now with the amount of damage caused underground by the blasts and the lengthy closure period due to enquiries and rebuilding, it is unlikely to be able to continue in its current form. Besides, even if the accident is shown not to be PRCC’s fault, there is still a price to be paid for 29 deaths.

Mining accident at Pike River

At around 3:30 pm Friday 19th November 2010, yesterday afternoon, there was an underground explosion at the Pike River coal mine which trapped 27 miners.

The Pike River coal mine is a relatively new underground mine which has been developed in the last 10 years in the Paparoa Ranges. The site was first accessed by road in mid-2006 with the major building works at the pithead completed a year later. In mid 2008 the two year construction of the 2.3 km underground tunnel to reach the coal seam was completed. A 108 metre ventilation shaft was completed in January 2009. One year later the first shipment of coal was made through the Port of Lyttelton. Coal mined at Pike River is transported to the surface using a slurry system. It is dewatered and crushed to uniform size at a coal preparation plant and then taken by truck for a 22 km trip to Ikamatua, where it is loaded into hopper rail wagons. Trains of 30 wagons transport the coal through the Southern Alps to the Port of Lyttelton for shipping.

Whilst the mine disaster is an ongoing matter I am posting maps on this site that shows where the mine is. I drew this map in the NZ Rail Maps map of the Stillwater-Westport Line which includes Ikamatua.

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This map shows the mine location in the Paparoa Ranges. The pithead or mine entrance is marked by the right i. The left i shows roughly where the mine itself starts while the line in between represents the underground access tunnel.	Here on the left we can see the pithead (i) with the road coming in from the right. The black line shows the visible road only. The road continues from the end of the black line but it is hidden in the bush and is not able to be traced accurately.
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Continuing down the access road which I understand follows the Pike Stream (or River, hence the name), it curves around to cross over Big River and then heads down the valley of this river to the coal processing plant. The approximate location being shown by the letter i. The coal reaches this location by a slurry pipeline running alongside the road.	The mine's coal is trucked down Logburn Road to Atarau Road the intersection of which can be seen at the bottom of the map, you can also see the Grey River at lower right.
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The Atarau Road heads north-east to Ikamatua via the west bank of the Grey River. Here we can see the bridges crossing the Otututu River and Mawheraiti (Little Grey) River on the outskirts of Ikamatua.	The coal trucks go into the coal loading site where a conveyor carries coal onto rail wagons. The blue line is the rail siding.
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Loaded coal trains head south-west from Ikamatua to Stillwater on the Stillwater-Ngakawau Line.	At Stillwater the trains change onto the Midland Line and head east through the Southern Alps.
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At Rolleston the trains change to the Main South Line.	From Rolleston the trains go north-east to Christchurch.
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Passing the Middleton marshalling yards near the city centre, the coal heads east through the Port Hills to Lyttelton.	At Lyttelton, coal is stockpiled in the area shown by the star at the top of the picture. The coal is moved by conveyor to the collier wharf at lower left.

New motorway photos

Due to the fact that some bigwig in Wellington has decided that our Southern Motorway is a road of national significance, the motorway is currently being developed to four lanes.
Here is a photomap showing much of the development to date.

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I will continue to produce these from time to time to show what development has been occurring. At the moment the existing motorway from Barrington Street to Curletts Road is being widened, this involves new overbridges at Barrington St and Curletts Road. West of the latter it would appear the motorway is going to be raised on an embankment and will be following a new route which has been designated for a long time and which I will try to draw onto the same map so that you can scroll the view to see more information.

Coming from the east the first sign of the work you will see is at the Brougham/Jerrold/Collins/Simeon intersection. Jerrold St before the motorway was one piece of road and at Barrington St it took a sharp bend northward and ran alongside the park, I will draw it into the map to show this. The splitting into North and South was done when Brougham St was first put through which must have been sometime in the 80s. In between was a number of houses left over from before the development and a little street called Little Hillier Place, being effectively the end of Hillier Street which was cut off by the building of Jerrold Street South. These houses are now gone and the street is an entrance to the works where the overbridge ramps are under construction. This overbridge goes over Barrington St. Next we can see the bridge over Lincoln Road is being widened to four lanes. At the moment work is not progressing all along the route but in sections at a time.

Beyond the Curletts Road intersection the bridge over Curletts Road is just starting to have the embankments built and then the raised motorway embankment is being built out towards Halswell. Looking on the map I have drawn in where the route is to go, and you will see that it runs next to Wigram Road at first and then curves away to pass between two fairly new subdivisions at Aidanfield. It then swings around to cross Wigram Road and then runs alongside McTeigues Road to meet the intersection of Halswell Junction Road and Springs Road. I presume after that HJ Road to Main South Road will be upgraded to some extent as well but I don’t really know the details.

The album contains a number of photos taken along the route so there is some pictures of a subdivision at Sunnyside. I will try and get the photos captioned this week sometime.

Waiau Branch : Part 5 – Waikari to Hawarden

As noted elsewhere, the Weka Pass Railway began the removal of all track beyond the Waikari road crossing in 1986, in various stages. These were:

• March 1986: WPR decided to recover all track between the Hurunui River and Medbury. Commenced May 1986 and was completed August 1987.

• November 1986: WPR decided to recover all track between Hawarden and Medbury. (The Hawarden backshunt had however been lifted in mid 1985) Work started late 1987 and was completed mid -1991. The Waitohi River bridge beams were not recovered until 1996.

• October 1988: WPR decided to recover all track beyond Waikari crossing. Completed mid-1991 when the Waikari yard was lifted.

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Photomap. Zoom in and click on photos for more information.
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Main map. Zoom in and click on placemarks for more information.

Richmond Vale Railway, NSW, Australia

Continuing with mapping the disused rail lines of New South Wales I have now shifted my focus to the area around Newcastle, presently the Hunter Region. One of the other areas I have previously mapped was Wales in the UK, and just as there were many areas of South/Mid Wales that have had extensive coal mining reserves and operations, the Hunter Region has had many coal mines operated historically, with the majority of production ceasing in the 1960s due to the world wide drop in demand. In turn, this has meant quite a number of railways were built around 100 years ago to get the coal out and much of this remained in operation until the 1970s and 80s, and a particular feature of these operations, coming under the grouping of the South Maitland Railways, was the continued use of steam power until closure, as these were a private industrial rail network of considerable mileage. Many of the place names in the area are, in fact, of Welsh origin, as is Newcastle itself.

Wikipedia lists some 30 colliery operations in the South Maitland Coalfields. Some of these were served by the Richmond Vale Railway which had a length in total of some 28 km and included three tunnels. The RVR was first opened in 1856 to the Minmi mine. A branch off the route was built in the early 1900s which took it towards Weston where it joined the South Maitland Railway. It is this branch that constitutes the majority of the length of the route and its various features. Although it closed as long ago as 1962 substantial remnants are still visible and although NSWRail.net claims much has been lifted, GE overheads suggest a good deal of track was simply abandoned in place. I am going to describe the significant features as well as detail them in map views in the rest of this post.

 

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Hexham, the main line junction. Originally a line crossed over to the long-gone Hexham Wharf	Minmi Junction. The original line to Minmi continued south, the Richmond Vale line went west.
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Minmi. A couple of different lines can be seen which went to different collieries.	Continuing west on Richmond Vale Railway the line crosses the Sydney-Newcastle highway, passing under it via a steel culvert. It then runs through the middle of a swamp.
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The first of the three tunnels	Sugar loaf tunnel, the second on the line.
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A reasonably substantial bridge at the east side of this view with the third tunnel about 500 metres to its west.	Quite a large bridge remains here.
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A junction	Overbridge and Junction near Pelaw
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Junction at Weston	Back on the Minmi line, these bridges on the highway crossed over a side line to the Duckenfield Colliery.

Acknowledgments to NSWRail.net (good maps and coordinates of major features) and Wikipedia.