New Zealand - Early view of Lambton Station, showing staff clustered around a D, two composite bogie cars, class A and a 4-wheel F van, headed north. #603278 Lambton railway station - Lambton originally Wellington railway station in Featherston Street, Wellington, New Zealand was the southern passenger terminus for the Hutt Line and the Wairarapa Line from 1885 to 1936 and for lines further north until December 1908. Wellington's third railway station it had been preceded by station buildings temporarily at Pipitea Point and a site further south on Featherston Street beside Wellington's rail freight depot and its Railway Wharf. - The Manawatu line Thorndon station was built hastily in the spring of 1885 after the Manawatu line company and the Government failed to agree to share Lambton station. - Lambton station's platform closed in July 1936. Wairarapa and Hutt passengers continued to use the building's facilities and its temporary access to the new platforms until the unfinished Bunny Street building opened. The ticket office stayed open until 11:15pm on 19 June 1937, which was Bunny Street's official opening day, then this building was demolished. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambton_railway_station) 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