New Zealand’s first railways were built by provincial governments or private companies, with mixed results. In 1870 the central government took centre stage. Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel announced an ambitious programme to build more than 1,600km of railways in nine years, financed by massive overseas borrowing.
Narrow gaugeTo speed up construction and reduce costs, the government decided that all railways would be built to the narrow 1,067mm gauge. The broader Canterbury and Southland lines were converted later that decade. Although the gauge itself was not an obstacle to performance, the severe gradients, tight curves and narrow tunnels of the network would constrain rail development in later decades.
The government engaged the British firm John Brogden and Sons to build the first of Vogel’s railways. This company recruited 1300 labourers in England and brought them to New Zealand. Despite numerous delays and problems, by the mid 1870s short lines had been completed in or around Auckland, Napier, Wellington, Picton, Oamaru and Invercargill.
The most challenging project of the 1870s was the Rimutaka Incline railway, which connected Wellington’s Hutt Valley with the Wairarapa. The steepness of the eastern side of the Rimutaka Range required special Fell locomotives, which used horizontal inner wheels to grip a raised centre rail. The Incline was opened in 1878 and remained in use until 1955, when it was superseded by a tunnel.
First main trunk completedThe late 1870s saw the completion of New Zealand’s first ‘main trunk’ railway between Christchurch and Invercargill. The Christchurch–Dunedin line was completed in 1878, slashing travel time between the two cities to under 11 hours. From January 1879 trains ran all the way to Invercargill. By 1880 New Zealand Railways (NZR) was operating more than 1,900km of track, and carrying almost 3 million passengers and 830,000 tons of freight a year.
The rail-building pace slowed during the 1880s, a time of economic depression. The government offered generous land grants to encourage private rail ventures, and in 1886 the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company completed an important line between Wellington and Longburn, near Palmerston North. This railway joined up with the government line to New Plymouth, where steamships ferried travellers to and from Auckland.
Expanding the networkThe 1880s and 1890s also saw important improvements to the Vogel-era railways: light iron rails were replaced by heavier steel ones, larger stations were built, and signalling and safety measures were improved. More comfortable passenger carriages and more powerful locomotives – some of them built in the Railways Department’s own workshops – were introduced. New Zealand’s rail system was emerging from its rough pioneering phase to take a central role in the nation’s economic and social life.
Vogel’s visionary plan changed New Zealand forever. Railways opened up vast new districts to settlement and exploitation, and connected farms, forests and mines to markets and ports. Central government’s leadership in rail-building contributed to the abolition of the old provincial governments in 1876. For more than a century after 1870, New Zealand’s rail network would – with a few exceptions – be built and operated by the state.