Day 118 Taieri Gorge Railway.

The sun is back.  It is a beautiful day, at least it will be for the morning as the weather man is calling for rain this afternoon.  We were okay with that as we were taking the train up into the Taieri Gorge this morning.

We thought the best way to do it was to take the local transit down to the train station. So we hopped on the bus and headed downtown.  The station was built in 1903 and in its early days was handling up to 100 trains a day.  Today, besides being the rail depot, it also houses the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame.

Dunedin Train Station

We boarded the train for the four hour return trip that would take us 14 kilometers on the main line before turning north on the Taieri Gorge Line. 

Once we were on the Gorge Line we went through places like Wingatui, Mount Allan, Christmas Creek, The Notches and the Reef.  The story of how Wingatui got its name was that an early settler shot at a local bird.  He only winged it and the bird was a Tui.  Hence the name Wingatui.

We followed the Taieri River for most of the trip as it took us through farmland, plains, old gold fields and of course the Gorge.  We eventually climbed to a peak of 250 meters above sea level.  We crossed over viaducts both straight and curved.  We passed through numerous tunnels that were dug out with picks and shovels.  The longest being 437 meters or half a kilometer.

The building of the rail line began in 1879 but was not opened for use until 1889 and that was only to Hinton which was 27 kilometers from Dunedin.  It did not reach Cromwell, the end of the line, until 1921 which made the entire line 253 kilometers long.

It was a very enjoyable day as the scenery was quite nice, I wasn't driving and the rain held off until just before we got back into the station.  We had planned to do some other things downtown but with the rain we decided to have a late lunch and head back to the campsite.  We made it an early night as we are leaving Dunedin in the morning.