NEW ENGINE SHEDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22247, 23 October 1935, Page 14

NEW ENGINE SHEDS

£37,000 CONTRACT LET THORNDON RAILWAY YARDS The tender of tho Fletcher Construction Company of £37,000 has been accepted by the Railways Board for the erection of locomotive, rolling stock and machine shop sheds at the northern end of the new railway yards on the Thorndon reclamation, Wellington. Tho work will probably take a year, for the sheds will bo on a very large scale, measuring 227 ft. by 239 ft. and covering over an acre of ground. Tho contract price does not include the steel fabrication, which is being done at the Hutt railway workshops, or the driving of the 800 piles on which the building. will stand. There will be five divisions—steam locomotives, electric locomotives, a central repair shop, a machine shop, and a car and waggon shop—so that, though the general reference is to tho "new locomotive sheds," in fact, steam locomotives will not bulk very greatly, and as electrification of the lines out from Wellington progresses, steam locomotive work will be almost restricted to shunting. The fact that the site is on recently reclaimed ground has introduced the necessity of special constructional methods. Everything is carried on piles, which were grown on the department's plantations in the South Island. They have been driven to solid and will be cut off below permanent water level, bo that tho concrete work will have to be taken to some depth below the ground surface.