Last year I did some posts on the Midland and SNL, unfortunately most of the images from older posts have disappeared because of the change in my Google account. However this is only the second post on the Midland Line, so not much is actually missing.

I am not planning to do a series of ML posts at present because it will be in accordance with a tricky list of priorities I am juggling for producing content from around the country. Otira is a fairly significant station due to being quite large considering its isolated location, and is noted as having one of the largest railway housing settlements outside the main centres. I haven’t counted but I estimate around 40 houses there at its peak.

I have aerial photos from 1943, 1960 and 1982. The 1982 image is the best, followed by 1943 and 1960. So right now I am making up a mosaic to create maps from. Last night I spent a couple of hours downloading every available section of coverage of the ML and SNL from LDS.

Here is Otira taken in 1982. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days before I have my map tiles to start drawing from. What we can note about Otira is that it wasn’t a major freight yard and didn’t have a lot of facilities. Its significance was mainly achieved in conjunction with the operation of the Otira Tunnel where steam locomotives were exchanged for electrics.