The Roxburgh Branch was a branch line railway built in the Otago region of New Zealand's South Island that formed part of the country's national rail network. Originally known as the Lawrence Branch, it was one of the longest construction projects in New Zealand railway history, beginning in the 1870s and not finished until 1928. The full line was closed in 1968.
Construction
The original reason for the line's construction was to provide better transport access to Lawrence, then known as Tuapeka, the site of New Zealand's first significant discovery of gold. Contracts for construction were let by mid-1873, and work on the line was well under way by the next year, with a junction with the Main South Line established at Clarksville. Slips and contractor bankruptcies presented delays, but on 22 January 1877, the line opened to Waitahuna, followed by Lawrence on 2 April 1877, 35.27 km from Clarksville.
Calls were made to extend the Lawrence Branch further, with some proposals suggesting a route via Roxburgh could serve as the railway to Alexandra and Central Otago in general (instead, the Otago Central Railway followed a more circuitous route via the Taieri and Maniototo).J. A. Dangerfield and G. W. Emerson, Over the Garden Wall: Story of the Otago Central Railway (Dunedin: Otago Railway and Locomotive Society, 1995), 9. Decades passed until approval was granted to extend the line beyond its Lawrence terminus, with the next section to Big Hill (location of a tunnel between the Bowlers Flat and Craigellachie stations) opened on 4 October 1910. Upon completion of the Big Hill tunnel, the line was opened to Beaumont on 15 December 1914, but World War I delayed construction and the next section to Millers Flat was not opened until 16 December 1925. The line was finally completed when the section from Millers Flat to Roxburgh was opened on 18 April 1928. A modified form of the proposal to use Roxburgh as the route to Central Otago resurfaced, proposing that the branch be extended to meet the Central Otago Railway in Alexandra, but this did not come to fruition.
The junction of the Roxburgh Branch with the Main South Line did not always remain in Clarksville. In 1907, an extension of 2.8 km was built alongside the Main South Line into Milton to provide for better operation, and until this extension was closed on 19 September 1960, Milton rather than Clarksville acted as the junction.
Stations
The following stations were located on the Roxburgh Branch (in brackets is the distance from Clarksville):Patrick Dunford, "Roxburgh Branch", accessed 13 June 2007.
Glenore (5 km) Mount Stuart (8 km) Manuka (11 km) Round Hill (16 km) Johnstone (20 km) Waitahuna (24 km) Forsyth (29 km) Lawrence(35 km) Evans Flat (41 km) Bowlers Creek (44 km) Craigellachie (52 km) Beaumont (56 km) Craig Flat (68 km) Rigney (71 km) Minzion (76 km) Millers Flat (79 km) Teviot (88 km) Roxburgh (95 km)
Six of these stations possessed goods sheds and eight had cattle and sheep yards.
Operation
Like many other branch lines in rural New Zealand, the line typically operated with one mixed train of passengers and freight each way per day. Roxburgh is located in an important stone fruit growing region, and during the appropriate season, special trains would run to carry the large quantities of fruit. The construction of the Roxburgh Dam in the 1950s also provided much traffic for the line. Many extra trains were run during this period but train sizes by today's standards remained constrained due to the steep grades and restrictive locomotive power able to be used on the branch.
Passengers were not plentiful and the line became freight-only from 4 September 1936. This was an attempt to improve the profitability of the line, but it did not work; from the opening of the final section to Roxburgh, the branch always made a working loss, with much traffic lost to road transport operators even before the line reached its greatest length. Steep grades and sharp curves that limited speeds further served to lessen rail's competitiveness.
In 1959–1960, the line carried 9,900 tonnes of freight out and 24,400 tonnes inwards, as well as 16,000 cattle and 51,800 sheep. Losses were increasing, and on 20 June 1961, it was announced that the line would be closed. Public outcry was severe enough that the line received a reprieve, and promises of extra traffic led to an increase in tonnage by 1965. This good news for the line's future did not last, however; by 1967, losses amounted to $100,000 a year and 1 April 1968 was announced as the date the line would close. Again, closure was deferred, but when a deal to export logs did not eventuate and fruit traffic shifted to road, the line's demise became inevitable and a final closure date was set for 1 June 1968.
Motive power
The line was almost exclusively operated by steam locomotives. When the line was still the Lawrence Branch, WD class tank locomotives were based in Lawrence in the early 20th century.Joe McNamara and Gordon Whiting, "Southland Locomotive Memories", New Zealand Railway Observer (April–June 1958), 59. When the line became the Roxburgh Branch, the predominant sources of motive power were tender locomotives of the A and AB classes during this period.
Diesel locomotives were only authorised to operate on the Roxburgh Branch at the time of its closure, to haul trains involved with the dismantling of the line. DJ class engines were the main type of diesel locomotives used.
Closure and demolition With closure announced for 1 April 1968, a passenger excursion train, intended to be the last passenger train to Roxburgh, ran on 31 March 1968 and was hauled by AB 795, now preserved on the Kingston Flyer. The Hon Peter Gordon, the Minister of Railways responsible for the final decision to close the branch, drove the train from Lawrence to Roxburgh under supervision on that day.Otago Daily Times Article, 1 April 1968, This train turned out not to be the last as the line was granted a two-month reprieve until 31 May 1968 awaiting a final decision on how the export logs from the vicinity of the then Beaumont State forest were to be transported. The nearby Heriot to Edievale section of the Tapanui Branch, previously closed on 1 January 1968 had its removal also delayed in 1968 for the same reason.Otago Daily Times Article, "Last Train Runs To Edievale Despite Chance Of Reprieve", 29 December 1967, It was then decided that those logs would be transported by road, thus sealing the fate of both lines.
The last official trains from and to Roxburgh ran on Friday 31 May 1968. The goods train leaving Roxburgh bound for Milton at 10 am that morning included three attached passenger carriages. Earlier in the week the carriages had also been attached to a goods train from Millers Flat to Lawrence and back. The cars on the final train carried some 150 children and adults on an excursion organised by the Teviot Fruitgrowers Association. The carriages exchanged trains at Lawrence, where the up and down trains normally crossed. The speed of the trains carrying the passengers that day was limited to 15 miles per hour throughout the journey due to poor track conditions. On the return journey into Roxburgh that afternoon a flimsy wooden barricade constructed two miles north of Millers Flat, created by locals protesting the closure of the line, was knocked aside by the advancing train, which barely slowed, to the cheers of its passengers. That last official train steamed into Roxburgh at 4:50pm to the song "Now Is the Hour" being played, along with the Last Post and whistles from the engine bearing the words "Last Puffing Engine" on a headboard. The Minister of Railways, the Hon J.B. Gordon, was given three cheers in the Roxburgh station and, although not present, was presented anonymously with a large bag of chaff.Staff Reporter, Otago Daily Times Article, "Roxburgh's Last Train", 1 June 1968,
Trains continued to run during the first week of June 1968 after closure; one each ran to Lawrence, Beaumont and Roxburgh. The last actual goods train from Roxburgh was a cleanup train clearing the stations between Roxburgh and Craig Flat of wagons, as well as the three passenger cars from the official last train, which left Roxburgh hauled by an AB steam locomotive on 6 June 1968. This was the last ever steam hauled train on the branch. On the same day an engine and van service hauled by a diesel locomotive of the DJ class locomotive ran from Dunedin to Beaumont; the DJ class had been granted running rights on the line that very week. On its return journey that day this diesel-hauled train cleared Beaumont yard and other points south to Lawrence where another train had previously cleared wagons and other equipment out. The DJ locomotive stalled on a steep grade near the Round Hill tunnel as a result of oak leaves falling on the line and the train's relatively large size for the lines steep grades. Sir Arthur Tindall, then judge of the Arbitration Court was travelling in the cab of the following train that day from Roxburgh hauled by the AB. The train he was on came up behind the stalled DJ and its train, struck detonators placed on the line as a warning of the stalled train ahead, and then pushed the diesel locomotive and its train over the hill at Round Hill. Both trains then continued on their respective journeys to Milton.F.W.G.Miller, The Story Of The Kingston Flyer,17.
Lifting of the Roxburgh Branch commenced on Friday 14 June 1968 with work trains hauled by DJ locomotives subsequently running all the way into Roxburgh. This was the first time DJ locomotives had operated to Roxburgh. By late June 1968 there was considerable removed material at Roxburgh yard ready for loading out by train. Hut accommodation for demolition workers, removal equipment such as bulldozers and a mobile crane on crawlers were transported to Roxburgh by a DJ hauled train on 2 July 1968. A temporary railway hut compound was established on the Roxburgh station platform for the accommodation of some of the demolition workers. Mains power to the Huts, which were individually wired for electricity, was sourced from the electric power lines at Roxburgh station yard. The idea was that these temporary huts were to be railed down to Millers Flat as the next demolition base just before the mainline rail track had been fully removed from Roxburgh. At the time there was some significant concern reported in the media (and up to Ministerial level) as to why these men had been not able to use the Roxburgh Railway houses, which by now were mostly empty, rather than the expense of establishing the temporary railway workers hut compound at Roxburgh. NZR stated this was impractical as the huts would be needed anyway as demolition progressed further down the line and so portable accommodation was optimum and in the long run cheaper than furnishing railway houses at Roxburgh for temporary demolition gangs that would be there a few short weeks. By 19 July 1968, the yard track, mainline track past the station platform and turntable at Roxburgh had been removed and cleared out. Men had been recruited from Winter Employment schemes and the mobile crane lifted complete track sets onto flat top wagons for transporting out. During demolition DSA class shunting locomotives worked at the railhead shuttling empty and loaded wagons from and to the nearest exchange siding (the nearest intact station yard) on the branch whilst DJ locomotives periodically cleared out materials removed from that nearest railhead back down the branch to the Main South Line as removal progressed.