Seymour, a wood-fired locomotive on loan from the Whangārei Steam and Model Railway Club, gets steamed up at Kawakawa Railway Station. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Seymour, a wood-fired locomotive on loan from the Whangārei Steam and Model Railway Club, gets steamed up at Kawakawa Railway Station. Photo / Peter de Graaf
A steam weekend in Kawakawa is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first railway in the North Island.
However, a challenge unknown to the operators of that first railway — which used horses to pull coal wagons on wooden rails — meant yesterday's steam excursions had to be cancelled.
The glitch was bureaucratic rather than mechanical with some aspect of the paperwork authorising the steam rides not completed to the NZ Transport Agency's satisfaction.
The Bay of Islands Vintage Railway Trust said steam rides would be up and running today, and in the meantime its four daily diesel train trips were operating normally.
Alan McGunnigle of the Whangārei Steam and Model Railway Club at the controls of Seymour, a wood-fired steam locomotive. Photo / Peter de Graaf
The trust did manage, however, to unveil a replica of the first passenger carriage used in the North Island and take it for a short maiden trip. The 12-seater carriage, which has been named Moa, is similar to a carriage put into service in Kawakawa in 1871.
An old freight carriage chassis was extended while the body was built from scratch by many hundreds of hours of volunteer labour since 2010.
Vintage railway trust members, from left, Johnson Davis, Mike "The Train" Bradshaw and Denis Hewitt on Moa's maiden trip. Photo / Peter de Graaf
With the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway Trust's own steam locomotive, Gabriel, in pieces and awaiting a new boiler, the Whangārei Steam and Model Railway Club loaned it Seymour for the weekend.
Seymour is a 1955, wood-fired, Peckett steam engine originally used at the Portland cement works. It was the last steam engine imported into New Zealand.
The railway trust's steam guru, Mike Bradshaw, said the original railway was built by the Bay of Islands Coal Company and ran along Gillies St to Derrick Landing, where the coal was transferred onto barges for the rest of the trip to the port at Opua.
Vintage railway trustees and volunteers who built a replica of Kawakawa's first passenger carriage. Photo / Peter de Graaf
The horses were replaced with a steam engine and the wooden rails with steel about a year later.
It was the first railway in the North Island and would have been the first in New Zealand but for a railway which opened in Canterbury three weeks earlier, he said.
Diesel train rides to Taumarere will leave Kawakawa at 10.45am, noon, 1.15pm and 2.30pm. Short steam rides with Seymour and Moa will operate in between. The railway's restoration shed is also open to visitors.
