Photography - Historical | |
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New Zealand - Summit Station, after third house has been erected, and S engines have started running (c. 1885). #603243 Summit railway station - Construction of Summit station was covered by the Summit Contract for the Rimutaka Incline. Seven tenders were submitted for the work, with the contract being let to Messrs. Collie, Scott and Wilkinson for the sum of £18,701. It was expected that the contract would be completed between 12 July 1874 and 22 July 1876, and covered the station yard, drainage works and Summit Tunnel. - The yard was formed by cutting a terrace into the hillside, with the excavated fill being dumped on the opposite side of the yard. Further ground was levelled in the hillside above the yard on which houses were built. Over time, further ground was filled in on which to extend the yard and tracks. - Once the yard had taken shape, work started on the tunnel, which was originally known as Rimutaka Tunnel. It was to be approached through a cutting six chains long and up to 60 feet deep. The line started out at a gradient of 1 in 1,000 on entering the tunnel for 12 chains, 1 in 300 for 11 chains, then got progressively steeper at 1 in 92, 44, 20 and exited the tunnel at 1 in 15. The tunnel had a horseshoe cross-section, with the apex being at 15 feet. - Six weeks into the contract and the approaches to the Wellington end of the yard had been excavated to a depth of 10 feet for about six chains, a depth that had to be increased later. At the Wairarapa end of the workings, the approach cutting to the tunnel had been completed and about 40 feet of the tunnel driven. In December 1874, on learning of the slow progress the contractors were making on the tunnel, the Government made the first of many complaints, which seemed to have the desired effect. The Evening Post, a critic of the railway, reported in the following March that work was proceeding rapidly and satisfactorily. - The following June, work on the tunnel was proceeding at about a chain a month, little faster than before. It would not be until March 1877 before the two headings met. The Public Works Department later lined the tunnel after the rails reached Summit so work trains could be used to bring in supplies. The Summit Contract was finally completed on 10 December 1877, 17 months late. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_railway_station,_Wellington_Region) Footplate - This is the saga of steam and steel in a new country. It begins in 1863, when New Zealand's tiny scattered settlements lay weeks apart in terms of travel time and when, fortunately, the arts of railway making were beginning to bear good fruit. - The young country's irregular surface posed tricky problems for surveyors, engineers and the men who designed and drove the locomotives. But the boundless confidence and enthusiasm of the visionary premier Julius Vogel inspired the work; and by the end of Victoria's reign New Zealand's railways were approaching the zenith of their development. - This book tells the story. It is not a formal history but a series of sketches and impressions of the trunks and branch lines, the tracks, the bridges and tunnels, the locomotives and their rolling stock and, above all, of the men of the footplate in that golden age of the grand steam railways. - This book was in its production stages when the author died in October 1977. Gordon Troup, doyen of New Zealand's railway writers, was born in the 19th century and grew up to know and to love his subject. He worked thousands of kilometres on the footplate in his native country and in France. The old drivers and firemen were his lifelong friends. He was no main-trunk snob - he warmed as joyfully to the traction-engines and the little bush-tramway locomotives as he paid homage to the behemoth engines of the main line expresses. - In the book we ride with him in the cab, up and down and across all New Zealand, sharing the tribulations and the triumphs of driver and fireman, straining painfully up grim gradients and around awkward curves with overloaded trains, rollicking down the grades to the flats where straight and level running encourages engine and crew to prove their mettle .... - The illustrations selected by the author run obligato to his text, and will bring pangs of nostalgia to all who, like Mr Troup himself, see the steam-age railways as the symbol of New Zealand's rise to nationhood. - Author: Troup, Gordon - ISBN: 0589010964 Click the link provided at the top to purchase the book through the MAD on New Zealand Shop - Supporting New Zealand Authors and Artists