Nelson Section

The Nelson Section as its name implies, remained an isolated section its whole life. With construction starting in April 1873 on the Nelson Foxhill Railway as the first easy section was promoted as, it envisaged a great future with the prospect of linking up with Greymouth and Christchurch via a promised Midland Railway. Construction progress was slow with ultimately 64 miles (just over 100km) constructed over some 50 years. When all construction ceased in 1930, a gap of only a 42 mile (67km) existed in order to connect with Inangahua, the railhead from Christchurch at the time.

The following table lists all the stations with their distances from the start (Port) in both Miles and chains, and in kilometres, It also lists the station's elevation in feet and metres, plus opening an closing dates. The station names form hyperlinks to the individual station pages where more details may be found.

Station	Mileage M.Ch	Metrage km	Elevation ft	Elevation m	Opened	Closed
Port	0.00	0.00	10	3	17/05/1880	3/09/1955
Nelson	1.00	1.60	10	3	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Bishopdale	2.72	4.67	213	65	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Stoke	5.32	8.67	74	23	26/02/1876	3/09/1955
Freezing_Works	6.72	11.10	(22)	(6)	17/06/1915	3/09/1955
Richmond	8.32	13.52	28	13	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Appleby	9.32	15.13	51	16	c.23/04/1895	3/09/1955
Hope	10.32	16.74	72	22	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Brightwater	13.16	21.24	93	28	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Spring_Grove	14.48	23.50	123	36	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Wakefield	17.24	27.84	204	62	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Wai-iti	20.22	32.19	328	100	31/01/1876	3/09/1955
Foxhill	21.16	34.12	367	112	25/07/1881	3/09/1955
Belgrove	22.56	35.63	438	134	25/07/1881	3/09/1955
Motupiko	31.72	51.34	621	189	16/02/1899	3/09/1955
Mararewa	35.08	56.49	529	161	22/10/1906	13/06/1954
Tapawera	36.64	59.22	479	146	6/08/1906	3/09/1955
Rakau	39.48	63.73	555	169	6/08/1906	3/09/1955
Tadmor	42.24	68.08	671	205	6/08/1906	3/09/1955
Kiwi	47.32	76.28	896	274	18/12/1908	3/09/1955
Tui	50.48	81.43	1064	325	2/09/1912	3/09/1955
Kaka	55.32	85.94	1208	369	2/09/1912	3/09/1955
Glenhope	60.19	96.64	1272	388	24/04/1912	3/09/1955
Kawatiri	64.10	103.20	1160	354	21/06/1926	21/06/1931
Gowan_Bridge	67.03	109.5	1050	320	13/05/1929	24/06/1933

CONSTRUCTION

Like any Railway, getting construction underway in the 1800's was never easy and inevitably carried out in stages as funding could be made available. With very low populations in any given area, funding such projects was beyond their means and often involved employing creative alternative. Petitioning to Government played a significant role in which some areas got funding ahead of others, but at the end of the day, the total that could be committed in any one year was spread out in a way that suited Central Government, rather than the wishes of any particular locals.

Preliminaries

Nelsons railway dreams started in 1862 already, when a feasibility study was requested from the Provincial Council for 19km of railway From Nelson to the Wairoa River. Before long, news of gold discoveries on the West Coast and coal deposits in the mountains to the south-west saw that dream expand to a railway to the Western Ranges. However, the huge burden of debt that the community would be lumbered with shattered those dreams for a number of years until a real gold-rush developed, moving rapidly up the west Coast.

The dreams were now formulated into a defined plan with a land grant proposed to partly fund the construction of a line from Nelson to Cobden (Greymouth). This plan was duly approved by the Central Government with the passing of the Nelson, Cobden and Westport Railway Land Act. Nelson however, could still not fund such a grand project and sought support from England which they did eventually find, only to have first, the Franco-Prussian war interfere, and then Julius Vogel's Immigration and Public Works Policy, as Central Governments answer to a flagging local economy. The Nelson Provincial Council could not compete against that, so all local efforts came to nothing.

From this point on though, the Nelson Cobden Railway continued to be promoted by the Government but in a more piecemeal fashion, given the whole scheme was beyond anyone's means. The Provincial Council was still keen to improve the lot of their constituents and approved the construction of 11km of railway from Cobden to Brunner, and 35km of line from Nelson to Foxhill. Meanwhile, an ardent group were still making efforts to look at alternative ways of funding the total scheme, but after months of effort, these all eventually failed. The only consolation was that Julius Vogel (now Premier) agreed to make the proposed route part of the South Island Trunk Line and get surveys and construction underway as soon as practical.

Nelson - Foxhill

Legislation authorising the construction of the Nelson and Foxhill Railway had become law in November 1871, with survey work completed and design drawings well advanced by August 1872 for a low-level Line following the coastal cliffs between the port and Stoke. However when John Carruthers (then Engineer-in-Chief) visited in late November, he instructed further survey work for an alignment over Jenkins Hill deeming that the better line in the long term. While this delayed that section of the railway, orders were issued to call tenders as soon as possible for the Stoke to Foxhill section with land acquisition to also get underway. An order was placed in February 1873 for the track, Locomotives and carriages to be supplied from England. March saw the Waimea Contract (Stoke to Foxhill) let to Scott & Robinson from Nelson for ???? with the turning of the first sod celebrated on Tuesday May 6th 1873. It was November before a final decision was made to adopt the Jenkins Hill route and March 16th 1874 before a contract was let to Bray Bros for the sum of £11,125 19s 8d. for the earthworks. The first sod was turned just 9 days later.

The only substantial bridge on this section crossed the Wairoa River at Brightwater

Two engines and six carriages were supplied as part of the initial railway equipment with the first locomotive fired on May 3rd 1875 These two engines were later to be classified D and were of a 2-4-0 wheel arrangement and designed and built by Neilson & Co of Glasgow. They were from the first batch of these locomotive (7 in total), and received the names Trout and Kingfisher.

It wasn't until motive power was available that good progress could be made with the track. John Scott had won the tender for track laying and used the engines for carting track materials and ballast, with the official opening ceremony taking place on January 29th 1876.

While this railway was touted as the Nelson Foxhill Railway, the first two contracts in fact only went as far as what was technically Upper Wakefield, later to be called Wai-iti a mile short of Foxhill.