Ferrymead Embankment Price Set By Railways

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31522, 9 November 1967, Page 7

Ferrymead Embankment Price Set By Railways

The New Zealand Railways Department has set a price iof S5lOO on the railway land which includes the historic: Ferry mead embankment, the chairman of the Feirymead i Steering Committee (Mr G. IL. Evans) said this week. The land—the embankment of 3} acres which is three-quarters of a mile long, and a triangular section of 8j acres which runs through ‘ the middle of the science! museum section of the Ferry-1 mead project at its south end!

’—was of very great import- ' ance to the whole project, ■said Mr Evans. I “At present neither the j Railway and Locomotive Society nor the Ferrymead Steering Committee has the money required nor do they have an assured income to buy the land on a deferred purchase basis,” he said. The embankment links the ,two ends of the Ferry mead iproject—the science museum and the tramway section. This embankment was where the first public railway! in New Zealand was opened ’ in 1963.

The committee had hoped that the railway land could be given and put in trust, but (the Minister of Railways said | this could not be done. As a result there was, until the purchase price could be found, a lack of secure tenure for improvements: and the building programme was held up accordingly. Last Saturday nine members of the Canterbury I branch of the New Zealand I Contractors’ Federation using (eight trucks and a front-end | loader brought 300 yards of ’truck ballast from Hornby! (and spread it in a previouslvj (excavated trench for 25 (chains of the tramway route (The ballast had been given.’ “The federation members) and their drivers freely gave the use of their time and equipment. This amounted to a total saving of between S3OO and $400,” Mr Evans said.