Big upgrade puts trains off tracks for two weeks

Auckland trains will be out of action for more than two weeks from Christmas Day. Photo / Supplied

Auckland trains will be out of action for more than two weeks from Christmas Day during the region's most extensive summer rail shutdown.

The operation will affect not only train passengers, but also motorists who will have to avoid closed road bridges and Pukekohe residents living along the route of trucks carrying freight from the town's railyards to Auckland.

No trains will run anywhere in Auckland until January 10, when passenger services will resume on the western railway line only.

An extensive rail construction and maintenance programme - the largest in six years of summer shutdowns as work picks up on the $1 billion electrification project - will keep passenger trains off the southern, eastern and Onehunga lines for an extra week, until January 17.

Freight trains will be allowed to travel south of Pukekohe on the southern and eastern lines in the third week, after having their passage blocked in the first fortnight.

Five road bridges over the southern line through Manurewa, Papatoetoe and Papakura will also close to traffic for varying periods until March, so KiwiRail can build replacements with enough clearance for electricity lines to run underneath.

Auckland Transport is running buses to replace passenger rail services, but freight will be unloaded from trains to trucks at Pukekohe from Boxing Day until January 10.

KiwiRail electrification project director Murray Hood acknowledges that will make life difficult for eastern Pukekohe residents as up to 10 trucks an hour rumble past their homes in each direction on the journey between the Southern Motorway and the town's railyards.

Although truck drivers would be under instructions to be as quiet as possible while travelling along Pukekohe East Rd, with minimal engine braking, he expected the operation to be "very painful" for residents during the fortnight.

But Mr Hood said it was unfortunately unavoidable, and would hopefully offer a valuable demonstration of what New Zealand roads would be like in the absence of freight trains, of which three or four a day would terminate at Pukekohe during the Auckland shutdown.

About 200 KiwiRail staff and contractors, including some drafted in from other regions, will be involved in construction and maintenance work likely to cost around $30 million over the three weeks from Boxing Day.

"That's quite a lot of work to get done in that time," Mr Hood said.

As well as the bridge replacement projects, rail tracks need to be lowered at a road crossing in Church St East, Southdown, and through the 800m Purewa tunnel between Glen Innes and Meadowbank on the eastern line.

New signals, which will be insulated from the high voltage overhead traction system for electric trains, will be installed along tracks around Britomart and Quay Park in readiness for "bi-directional" passenger movements to and from Kingsland station during the Rugby World Cup tournament.

The first 45 of 3500 electrification masts will be erected, around the Newmarket railway junction and Baldwin Station on the western line, which closed on Friday so a new platform can be built and an existing structure lengthened to take six-car trains.

Passengers who usually catch trains there will have to do so from Mt Albert or Morningside from January 10 until the station reopens in early February.

Platform extensions and modifications will also be carried out at Puhinui and Remuera during the shutdown.

BRIDGE CLOSURES

Road bridges to close

St George St, Papatoetoe - December 26 to January 16.
Bridge St, Papatoetoe - already closed, to reopen on January 31.
Browns Rd, Manurewa - December 26 to early February.
Station Rd, Manurewa - December 26 to January 21.
Clevedon Rd, Papakura - December 26 to March.