Hutt Park Railway
| Hutt Park Railway | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | |||
| Locale | Hutt Valley, New Zealand | ||
| History | |||
| Opened | 1885 | ||
| Closed | 1982 | ||
| Technical | |||
| Track gauge | 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) | ||
| |||
The Hutt Park Railway was a private
industrial siding
.
Construction
The Hutt Park Railway was constructed to serve the
Island Bay and sought the competitive advantage of a railway to provide easier access for patrons.[1] The first proposals for a line were made as early as 1874, not long after the first portion of the Wairarapa Line was opened to Lower Hutt, but this proposal was rejected by the 1880 Royal Commission. Nonetheless, in 1884 the Hutt Park Railway Company was formed and the 3.2-kilometre line was constructed in 38 days.[2]
Construction took place without authorisation; to resolve a legal dispute in the High Court, section 137 of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal and Public Bodies Empowering Act 1915 legitimised the line.
Operation
The junction with the main line was at a
WA class tank locomotive as motive power.[2]
Closure
In 1906 the WRC relocated to a new track near
References
- ^ a b c Valley Signals, "Hutt Park Railway Company", accessed 12 June 2007.
- ^ a b c d Churchman & Hurst 2001, p. 155.
- ^ New Zealand Railways Department, 1901 Working Timetable extract
- ^ Tony Hurst, Farewell to Steam: Four Decades of Change on New Zealand Railways (Auckland: HarperCollins, 1995), 131.
- ^ Bryan Bishop, "Silver Stream - The Early Years", 3.
External links
- Paragraph in The Cyclopaedia of New Zealand (1897)
- Aerial view of Petone, in National library shows the track running along the foreshore.
Further reading
- Churchman, Geoffrey B; Hurst, Tony (2001) [1990, 1991]. The Railways of New Zealand: A Journey through History (Second ed.). Transpress New Zealand. ISBN 0-908876-20-3.