The Palmerston North–Gisborne Line (PNGL) is a secondary main line railway in the North Island of New Zealand. It branches from the North Island Main Trunk at Palmerston North and runs east through the Manawatū Gorge to Woodville, where it meets the Wairarapa Line, and then proceeds to Hastings and Napier in Hawke's Bay before following the coast north to Gisborne. Construction began in 1872, but the entire line was not completed until 1942. The line crosses the runway of Gisborne Airport, one of the world's few railways to do so since Pakistan's Khyber Pass Railway closed.
In conjunction with the Moutohora Branch that ran north from Gisborne between 1900 and 1959, the line was originally intended to connect to the East Coast Main Trunk, described in 1875 as the North Island trunk line, but the difficult inland section between the Tāneatua Branch in the Bay of Plenty and the Moutohora Branch was never completed.
The line has not carried scheduled passenger trains since October 2001, when the Bay Express service was cancelled. The northern portion of the line, from Napier to Gisborne, is currently inoperative due to damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. The section was mothballed north of Wairoa due to four significant washouts during a storm in March 2012. The whole Napier–Gisborne section was officially mothballed (but not closed) in December 2012. The Napier–Wairoa section reopened for forestry traffic in June 2019, but has been mothballed again following Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. The section between Wairoa and Gisborne has suffered from further slips and washouts since 2012. The Gisborne City Vintage Railway has a lease agreement over the Gisborne to Muriwai section of the line, which it uses for its seasonal vintage trains, while the section between Nuhaka and Kopuawhara is leased to a rail bike operation.
Construction The PNGL was constructed in two distinct phases. The southern portion between Napier and Palmerston North was built between 1872 and 1891, while the northern portion from Napier to Gisborne followed at a much later date, 1912 to 1942.
Palmerston North – Napier section
Hawke's Bay featured in Julius Vogel's "Great Public Works" scheme of 1870 to create a cohesive national transport network, and in 1871, a line south from Napier was officially authorised. Construction commenced in 1872 and the first section opened to Hastings on 13 October 1874; from Napier's railway station, it followed a coastal shingle ridge to Clive, and then turned inland. From Hastings, the line proceeded inland through the initially easy country but became steadily more difficult. It was thickly wooded at the time and the upper reaches and tributaries of the Manawatū River provided engineering difficulties. The line opened to Pakipaki on 1 January 1875; Te Aute on 17 February 1876; Waipawa on 28 August 1876 and Waipukurau three days later on 1 September 1876. Takapau followed on 12 March 1877, then Kopua on 25 January 1878 for a total of 103 km of railway built in six years.
Construction slowed from this stage due both to the terrain and the beginning of the Long Depression. The next section, from Kopua to Makotuku, featured two viaducts; the long, high Ormondville viaduct and the long, high Makotuku viaduct. It opened on 9 August 1880. It was nearly four years until the next section, 7 km to Matamau, opened on 23 June 1884. On 1 December 1884, the major centre of Dannevirke was reached. Beyond Dannevirke, the terrain became somewhat easier and the line reached Woodville at the eastern end of the Manawatū Gorge on 22 March 1887. However, work from the Palmerston North end had not begun until 1886, and due to significant engineering troubles associated with the Manawatū Gorge, the line was not completed until 9 March 1891. Upon completion, a direct route between Napier and Wellington was established but required a change of trains in Longburn with the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company. On 11 December 1897, the Wairarapa Line was completed through to Woodville and this provided a through NZR connection from Wellington to Hawke's Bay, via the Rimutaka Incline.
Napier – Gisborne section
Due to the isolation of Gisborne, a railway link to other centres was not initially given serious consideration. By 1900, a Railway League had been formed to pressure the government into building two lines, one via Rotorua to Auckland and another to Napier and thus Wellington. Gisborne's first railway, the initial portion of what became the Moutohora Branch, opened to the north in 1902. In 1910 a route south was approved, though the Opposition said it wouldn't pay and voted against it. This was proposed to follow an inland route to the Wairoa River, which would then be followed to the town of Wairoa before proceeding along the coastline to Napier. Work began in April 1911, and the first to Ngatapa was essentially complete by December 1914. The economic impacts of World War I led to the suspension of construction beyond Ngatapa towards Waikura, and it did not recommence until 1920 after further surveying was undertaken. This work may have included some tunneling but no trace of this exists today.
Work also recommenced at the other end of the inland line in 1919, with about 20 men, later 54, working at Frasertown in 1920, though hampered by concrete shortages. Alternative routes, including the coastal route, were surveyed in 1923. As late as 1934 the partly-built Wairoa to Frasertown line was shown on the map, after which it became a stock road and then Wairoa aerodrome.
In 1920, work began on a short isolated branch from Wairoa to the port of Waikokopu; it was completed in 1924 and was built initially to ship meat from a freezing works in Wairoa. In 1924, an engineer's report recommended this branch be incorporated as the southernmost portion of a new coastal route from Wairoa to Gisborne. The Public Works Department (PWD) accordingly abandoned the inland Ngatapa route and began work on the coastal route. At this time, the route from Napier to Wairoa was also under construction. The first sod had been turned in Napier in 1912, but delays meant the line was not opened to Eskdale by the PWD until December 1922 and handed over to the New Zealand Railways Department (NZR) on 23 July 1923. The next section, to Putorino, was handed over to NZR on 6 October 1930.
At this point, the construction of the line was plagued by natural disasters and a lack of money and government will to complete the project. The Great Depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to a temporary halt to the entire project. In January 1931 all the workers on the project were dismissed. In February that year the Hawke's Bay earthquake resulted in the closure of the completed Napier – Putorino section. Despite the closure of the completed section, work recommenced on the line after the earthquake, and by September, all that was required to complete the Napier to Wairoa section was one tunnel, one viaduct (Matahorua Viaduct), and of track. Due to the toll of the earthquake and the Great Depression, the government recommended that work cease and the line be abandoned. The line remained in place for the next four years with no work occurring on its completion, gradually deteriorating. A petition of 8,000 signatures to recommence construction of the line was presented to parliament, and in the November 1931 New Zealand general election, Gisborne MP Douglas Lysnar lost his seat to Labour candidate David Coleman on Labour's promise to recommence construction. There was briefly a proposal for a private company to take over construction and operation of the line in 1933. The proposal continued until a new government, the first Labour government, was elected in November 1935. In early 1936, the new Minister of Public Works Bob Semple ordered the recommencement of work on the line. This led to the Napier – Putorino section being reopened on 17 October 1936. On 1 July 1937, the long Mohaka Viaduct was completed; at high, it is New Zealand's highest viaduct. The full line from Napier to Wairoa and Waikokopu opened on 23 August 1937.
Severe flooding in February 1938 forced the closure of the entire line beyond Putorino and killed 21 construction workers on the final stage between Waikokopu and Gisborne in the Kopuawhara disaster. The line was restored to operational standards by December 1938 and transferred from the PWD to NZR on 1 July 1939.
Work persisted on the final section from Waikokopu to Gisborne through World War II and the final stage was completed in 1942. The PWD was able to operate freight trains through to Gisborne from 3 August 1942, passengers were carried from 7 September 1942, and the complete PNGL passed into NZR ownership on 1 February 1943.
East Coast Main Trunk connection
The original intention of the Moutohora Branch was to connect Gisborne with Auckland via Rotorua. As the East Coast Main Trunk (ECMT) extended into the Bay of Plenty, surveys focused on connecting the Moutohora branch with ECMT. A 1928 survey proposed a route from Matawai to reach the ECMT railhead at Taneatua via Ōpōtiki. This scheme was shelved in 1931 (along with the construction of the Napier – Gisborne section) due to the Great Depression. Following the election of the first Labour government in 1935, Bob Semple promised work on the Moutohora – Taneatua section would commence once men and equipment were available. Prior to the 1938 New Zealand general election a new work camp and workshops were established at Taneatua, and pegging parties began to mark out the route from Taneatua to Ōpōtiki. This work came to an abrupt end in the weeks following the general election. In 1939 £45,000 was provided for extension from Taneatua to Ōpōtiki and a route pegged out as far as a proposed Waimana railway station. The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 ensured the Government had a justification for not bringing the project to a halt, while promising that the halt was only temporary.
With the completion of the Napier – Gisborne section in 1943, further delegations were made by Gisborne business interests to complete the Moutohora – Taneatua section. Semple promised these delegations that work would recommence following the end of hostilities. By late 1946, no further work had been undertaken; in 1947 a further promise was made of an "early connection" following a strong showing for the opposition at the 1946 New Zealand general election. A route was surveyed in 1947, leaving the Moutohora Branch just before Mātāwai, and running in the Koranga Stream/River and Waioweka River valleys to Ōpōtiki. In 1948 Semple retrenched his position, claiming that he had only ever promised an investigation of the route. With the change in government following the 1949 New Zealand general election, a further delegation from Gisborne presented to new Minister of Works Stan Goosman (who was also Minister of Railways) a case for completing the link. Goosman would not make any commitment to the project, and pointed to a new highway parliament had authorised between Ōpōtiki and Gisborne as an alternative to the rail link. Following this response, local Gisborne interests realised that the battle was lost. Moutohora was to remain a branch line, which closed in 1959. The ECMT was redefined in 1978 as Hamilton – Kawerau, leaving Taneatua as a branch, eventually being closed to traffic in 2001.
Operation Passenger services