NZR District Offices
INTRODUCTION to the Administrative Districts of the New Zealand Railways
With a national network, it becomes impractical to manage it all from one central location. Apart from the Canterbury Provincial Railways, all other rail developments got underway properly around 1873 following the Adoption of the Immigration and Public Works Act 1872. This Act provided the means to fund railway construction with a number of projects all set to go. With the Dunedin and Port Chalmers Railway already built, and with construction of the Dunedin and Clutha Railway immediately getting underway, it is not surprising that Dunedin became the centre of railway management as well. This did not last long though for as soon as the Canterbury Railways had been converted from 5ft 3in to 3ft 6in gauge, it became the de-facto head office because the Locomotive engineer had decided to make that his base.
By that time already, it was realised that the South Island Network which had grown from three isolated sections to a single interconnected railway with a main line nearly 700km long (Amberley to Bluff), could not be managed from a single centre and was soon divided into three administrative Districts, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill but due to the way things had developed, were still operating under two system, Canterbury and Otago. This did not get tidied up until the Railway Commissioner's of 1876 had completed their work. By this time there were four other isolated sections in the South Island Picton, Nelson, Westport and Westland (operating out of Greymouth). Other than Nelson which remained an isolated section all its life, Westland was connected to Christchurch in 1928 with the completion of the Otira Tunnel, Westport was connected to Greymouth in 1943 with the completion of the Buller Gorge and Picton was linked to Christchurch in 1945 with the completion of the difficult coastal section south of Kaikoura.
In the North Island, railway development was not able to progress as quickly, partly due to more difficult terrain, partly due to problems gaining access to the necessary land, and partly due to a downturn in the economy. These triggers all played a role in various parts of the North Island to a greater or lesser degree, resulting in it being 1885 before Palmerston North was linked to New Plymouth and 1889 when Wellington was linked to Napier. Those two sections were not linked till 1891 with the completion of the Manawatu gorge section. That only left Gisborne as an isolated section in the lower North Island but in the Upper North Island linking up seemed to take forever. While Auckland was linked to Wellington in 1908, KawaKawa to Whangarei not till 1911, and Whangarei was not connected to Auckland till 1925, and Kaihu to Auckland till 1943. This was about the same time as Gisborne got linked to Napier.
There were therefore two drivers that determined the need for an administration centre, firstly its isolation from any other part of the network and secondly a practical limit to the area covered. The first constraint of isolation is quite obvious but the second less so. It hinged more around response times, particularly in the 19th century when the only way you could get anywhere quickly was by train. For those practical reasons, once the network was completed in 1945, the South Island was divided into four Districts; Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and West Coast. The North Island was similarly divided into four Districts with the completion of the North Island Main Trunk. Auckland, Ohakume, Wanganui and Wellington. Once the East Coast Main Trunk was completed, Hamilton became the logical centre rather than Ohakune. All these districts are shown diagrammatically in the image below
