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New Plymouth Wagon

This boxcar displays 10 photographs taken in the city of New Plymouth, which lies on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is around 4 hours drive from Tauranga, and is a very important place to me and my parents. In my case it's because my Nana and Poppa (Mum's parents, and her sister) live there, as do my Auntie Irene and Uncle Kevin. Or as I used to call them, Uncle Irene and Auntie Kevin. Unfortunately Nana passed away in October 2016 at the age of 76. Coincidentally we happened to be in New Plymouth at the time. Curiously I saw DSG 3210 on the port shunt and DC 4444 at Smart Road yard on the same day as her funeral.

New Plymouth has a very unusual part of the New Zealand rail system. This is the section from Smart Road to Port Taranaki, which is only used by occasional shunts running to the Fonterra coolstores at the port. Normally KiwiRail uses DSG class shunters on this run. The railway runs right past Auntie Irene and Uncle Kevin's house, but I shan't tell you exactly where it is.

New Plymouth is the northern terminus of the Taranaki Line, which starts at a junction in Marton, where the line branches off from the North Island Main Trunk. The line was opened in 1885, and is 205 kilometres long (212 if you count the section from Smart Road to Port Taranaki). Along the way it passes through the towns of Wanganui, Patea, Hawera, Stratford and Inglewood. Stratford just so happens to be where my Mum was born, all the way back in August 1969. Not too far south of the town of Hawera is the giant Fonterra dairy factory at Whareroa. This is a major source of freight for KiwiRail, and I recall seeing some Palmerston North to Whareroa trains passing through Feilding back in July 2019.

Between 1933 and 2010, the Marton to Stratford section formed part of an alternative route to the North Island Main Trunk. The 2nd part was the 144-kilometre long Stratford to Okahukura line, which was mothballed in 2009. Today the line is mostly used by converted golf carts as part of a crummy tourism venture. Taumarunui appears to be the base for this operation, and if you drive south through Okahukura, you may see a long line of converted golf carts parked on the track.

The eight photographs on the side of this wagon were all taken by me. The ones on the roof were taken by my Mum, who was born in Stratford in August 1969.