NZR Workshops

Every railway has equipment it uses to carry out its operations, and involves steel wheels rolling on steel rails, and all this equipment requires regular maintenance if it is to stay operational. Those who were involved with setting up the beginnings of the NZR network, understood the need for workshops and had already ordered the machinery required for two railway workshops in 1871 more than a year before any 3'-6" gauge railway was operational. These first two workshops were based in Auckland and Dunedin as they were the focal points of the narrow gauge operations in New Zealand at the time However, once gauge conversion was complete in Christchurch in 1877, and given the Locomotive Supervisor was based in Christchurch the provision of a full workshop like Dunedin had became a priority. With the completion of what is now known as the Main South Line from Lyttelton to Bluff, it became logical to also provide some workshop facilities at Invercargill given its comparatively central location to what became a large network of tracks in the south of the South Island.

The development of railways in the North Island