KEY POINTS:
West Auckland's first proper piece of duplicate rail track in the 125 years since trains started uniting the district's various settlements was opened yesterday amid the jangling of mayoral chains.
The 1.20pm train from Britomart arrived at a fully madeover Henderson Station just a few minutes late, after collecting former New Lynn mayor Bruce McNaughton and former Glen Eden mayor Janet Clews at stops along the way.
They were cheered as they stepped on to a new platform, wearing the chains of office they held until their old boroughs merged into Waitakere City under the local government reforms of 1989.
Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey, who greeted them with former Henderson mayor Assid Corban, remarked: "We still keep our mayors like the Americans keep their Presidents."
Henderson Station, which first opened in 1881 and has its original building fenced off from its modern replacement which is on an "island" platform between what have become double tracks, has been remodelled as a joint venture between Waitakere City Council, the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and Government rail agency Ontrack.
Mr Harvey, whose council has built an opulent enclosed bridge for $5.5 million over the tracks between its new civic centre and Railside Ave as the first stage of a transport interchange which will from February include bus bays, said he had almost given up hope of seeing the arrival of duplicate tracks.
"We never thought this would happen," he said.
"We said we would get some picks and shovels and do it ourselves - just give us the tracks."
But he said that "out of the blue" this year came an arrangement which saw the transport authority develop the station and Ontrack build the new platform and two kilometres of new track towards the completion of a fully duplicated western railway line.
That is part of the Government's commitment to a basic Auckland rail upgrade over three years for $600 million.
Ontrack chief executive David George promised guests at yesterday's event, including three former Henderson Station clerical staff from the 1930s and 1940s, that double tracks would extend from Titirangi Rd just west of New Lynn to Swanson by the end of next year.
By 2009, when work would be complete between Titirangi Rd and Avondale and on a remodelled Newmarket rail junction, there would be "something even bigger to celebrate".
"Ontrack is a new organisation and is grappling with a network that has been starved of capital investment over past decades," Mr George said.
"Addressing this is our primary objective."
Transport authority acting chief executive Elena Trout said 1500 passengers a day now caught trains from Henderson, out of about 9000 on the whole western line, and numbers would continue to grow as six new stations opened in the next year.
But authority deputy chairman Rabin Rabindran said rail electrification, which his board had submitted for Government consideration, was essential to a modern public transport system.
If Auckland did not electrify its rail network it would be seen as lacking vision, which he recalled was once described by the blind American activist the late Helen Keller as a fate worse than having no eyesight.
