Kawakawa train helps keep age of rail alive

Kawakawa, which still has the steam train Gabriel (above) running through it, is a "heartening" reminder of our rich rail heritage, a new book says. Photo / File

Kawakawa is a "heartening" reminder of New Zealand's rich rail heritage, a noted author says.

On shelves in Northland today, 150 Years of Rail in New Zealand, a joint project with Motat, follows the "amazing pace" at which the rail network became the "arteries" of New Zealand though a collection of historical photographs.

English-born author Matt Turner said political and economic inertia meant rail had a "patchy history" in Northland.

"Isolated sections sprouted, private industrial lines, in the main serving the ports and, for instance, connecting Kamo to Kawakawa, but it took some while to link them to the network, and the 20th century witnessed their gradual decline."

Some of Mr Turner's favourite photographs in the Motat collection are of the lines to the North.

"Rail enthusiast Les Downey was photographing there in the late 1950s, when the preservation societies ran 'last hurrah' excursions on moribund sections like Donnellys Crossing, a timber extraction line. "It is heartening that the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway continues to run excursions through a small section of the North Auckland Line, including the streets of Kawakawa."

Mr Turner said his love for trains sprung out of his car-less student days, when a cheap, fast rail network was a "lifeline".

"It is no exaggeration to say that rail transformed New Zealand. When it was first pioneered here, mid last century, there were no inland road routes across the country, and large areas were inaccessible or impassable. If you wanted to travel any distance, you did so by sea."

Research on the project revealed most New Zealanders had a senior relative or two who lived through rail's golden decades between the 1930s and 1950s, when rail was still the country's prime people-mover, Mr Turner said.

"Admittedly, the early rail lines were lightweight and sharply curved, so the average speed was slow, but the many rural branch lines that fed the main trunks connected us as a nation, carrying us and our produce during the pre-automobile era and beyond.

"Trains ferried produce - meat, wheat, coal, timber - to cities and ports, and carried men to war."