BUILDING THE LINE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 88, 7 November 1932, Page 12 (Supplement)

BUILDING THE LINE

THIRTY YEARS OF WORK

DIFFICULT COUNTRY PENETRATED

It, is only 30 years ago since the Stratford Main Trunk railway was begun, the first sod being turned in Stratford by the Hon Wm. Hall Jones in 1901. Since then the line has crept forward gradually penetrating further and further towards the miniate goal, the Main Trunk, and as progress was made, the. more difficult became the territory through which it was to force its way. How. over, tha work from the other end did not begin until 1911, when work commenced at Okahukura and the thin line of steel set out to meet that from the other end. Many weary years passed before the two railheads drew near to each other, but at last they have met and the evnt is being duty celebrated with much talk and presumably much liquid refreshment. Soon the through train will tsar through the gorges and tun. nels and over the Hats, keeping to a regular time table, their noise echoing from valley to valley. it is recounted by James Cowan that when travelling through the Tangarakau district 30 years ago one of his companions, Widihani, by name, predicted as'they climbed the steep' papa ridges between the various valleys 'that the railway builders of the future would find the job a slow one, because of the number of long tunnels required." He was right. The final stretch, between Ohura and ! Whangamomona, . and particularly from Tahora to Ohura, has been the hardest. The most interesting phase of the work in recent times and at present is what is known as the Tangarakau section, embracing five or six miles in most difficult country. There is a saying among thos e on the job, that you can walk in any direction from the construction camp at Tangarakau and stamp your toes on surveyors' pegs. That just about sums up the position, and throws a bead on the nature of the country. When the men who first inspected the area reached The Flat (Tangarakau), 50 miles

from Stratford, they stopped and did a lot of thinking. Then one after the other conceived possible routes, threw out a line of pegs, and thought again. One route favoured was through the beautiful Tangarakau Gorge, beside the Tangarakau River —a "rapid-whitened, rock-strewn, snag-cumbered river tearing along

between lofty rangs blanketed in forest from base to skyline,'' as Cowan saw it. This was abandoned because of the faulty formation (treacherous papa). At last the present route was decided upon as the best. "When a (railway reaches a barrier of high hills that it cannot go round, there is only one thing to do. H>ence the 14 tunnels in 22£ miles that the line can boast. On the short five mile Tangarakau section alone there are four tunnels and every other kind of railway feature except a viaduct. And during the construction 'there Was even a viaduct, a towering trestle affair that is now concealed in the body of a monster filling that bridges a valley. Though it is rough featured and heartbreakingly hard, the country is most impressive in its natural rug, gedness. The ranges, ruthlessly gfish> ed by valleys, are thickly clothed with native bush, the luxuriousness of which is astonishing considering th e poor quality of the soil. Here and there a tall bald-barrelled rimu or pine rears itself above the shorter growth, stretching up to the sunlight from the close valleys. One or two growing near the permanent way serve the lowly role of electric power line poles. When th job is finished no doubt they will go the way of a good many of their smaller friends that have finished their life in a camp or cookhouse stove. Passengers of the future will peep from the carriage windows and will admire the scenery as they wind through the hills, not knowing and not caring (bless them!) how much effort it took to fasten the railway line on to the sides of the ridges, push it through

miles of solid earth, and carry it over gaping valleys.

At first glance on entering TangaI rakau from Tahora the great hills I strung together in contusing chains ! suggest a conglomeration converging | about The Flat and stretching away I in. branching spurs that accentuate I the confusion. But a closer inspecj tion disproves the initial impression. The hills are seemingly thrown about | higgledy piggledy when one is close I up against them, though there is a j certain amount of orderliness when j the view is comprehensive enough. ) They form themselves into a series |of watersheds, roughly parallel, all rising about 600 feet above the valley floors. These in turn are between 400 and 500 feet above sea level. The valleys themselves are scored by deep gullies and disfigured by minor hills, thus emphasising the confusion j idea. There is nothing visibly uniform except in the main formations j as seen on a map or from an aero. I plane.

j To have gone through the Tanga- | rakau Gorge as was once intended would have been both dangerous and I destructive, as much wonderful vir_ j gin bush would have been spoilt. So j the rail line has turned more to the j eastward, or right, from Tahora, and j after traversing three miles of mod. j erately hilly country is crossing the J river and penetrating the hills. i After leaving Tangarakau there is 1 a surprise round every corner, and there are plenty of corners. The trains of the future will have a good pull on some of the grades. There are tunnels, four of them in as many of them steep and narrow-, othres miles. There are huge cuttings, some wide and sloping. When opened they looked good for years. Then the rain i and air got to work and so did the j engineers. There are valleys that had j to be spanned, one so deep that it devoured a hundrd thousand cubic j yards of spoil bfore the filling was raised to the permanent way level 87 feet above the floor. There are | streams that had to be bridged or I diverted, one right in the course of a tunnel. And there are large areas that had to be drained. All these difficulties have combined to make the work slow, tedious and costly.