In the last couple of days progress has not been quite as rapid as last week but we have made a start on extracting the historical map tiles for all of the areas that are being added in Volume 5. These are for Terrace End, Woodville, Dannevirke and Waipukurau. In addition we have completed and added historical tiles for Marakeke, just 13 km south of Waipukurau, where Hatuma Lime Works is located, and whereby the single track main line Bridge No. 166 and the siding itself were originally within station limits Marakeke. Later on, Marakeke closed and Hatuma Lime Siding became a location in its own right. The lime works became well known for their opposition to Tranz Rail’s mass private siding closures of the late 1990s, and resumed rail loading when ONTRACK took over the national network in 2004. However, many of the sidings all over NZ that were still in place but mothballed when ONTRACK took over were never reopened and were removed in succeeding years, and it appears Hatuma Lime’s siding is no longer in operation. The location of Marakeke is also known as Maharakeke but the railway station was always called Marakeke.

So by the end of today we will have extracted and begun to map with all of these historical areas as well as all the areas around Gisborne that are being added to the maps.

At the weekend we produced a basic set of map backgrounds for the different eras for Woodville and drew maps for part of the yard as well as for the junction of the Wairarapa Line with the PNGL that occurs at Woodville. Woodville was different in its earlier guise before the late 1960s or early 1970s when the balloon loop connection to the Wairarapa Line was put in and at the same time the yard was enlarged. However the locomotive depot with turntable that was earlier present at Woodville seems to have been removed at about this time.

At Terrace End we finished drawing the maps of the main lines (NIMT and PNGL) such as they existed at that time, which was a different layout from today because in 1952 when the aerial photo was taken, the NIMT went through the middle of Palmerston North and the tracks therefore went in different directions. The gasworks siding has also been put into the maps.

We have begun working on the maps for Dannevirke, we have drawn the maps for the Waipaoa River Bridge south of Gisborne, and are also going to start work shortly on Muriwai Station south of Gisborne and maps for other areas of Gisborne as the tiles are extracted and checked. This should all come together over the next few days to enable us to push ahead with our proposed target to complete the entire set of PNGL maps by the end of this week. Although to make the maps more comprehensive we should consider adding Hastings and the rest of Napier, this will unfortunately take too long as it is now three weeks since we started work on this volume and it has to be brought to a completion to keep up with the timetable. So all of the historic aerial maps have been done and a bit of time has been spent as usual discovering and fixing mistakes in them so that everything can be pushed along rapidly.

Marakeke and Hatuma Lime Siding as seen on an S&I diagram from 1981, back in the tablet era. The station layout is unusual in having two separate sets of siding tracks that are not continuously connected. This is due to the single track bridge, which has only ever carried the main line, and was apparently never doubled to carry the loop siding the full length of station limits, unlike numerous other stations with a bridge inside station limits where bridges were double tracked for this exact purpose.

Marakeke and the limeworks using the 1983 NZR corridor survey.

Waipukurau is an interesting station itself for several reasons. One is
that it also had a locomotive depot that was gradually removed, as with
Woodville the turntable was the last part to disappear. Waipukurau also
had a new bridge No. 171 built at the north end in 1979, which replaced
the previous bridge that was just slightly to the west of it, and at the
same time the opportunity was taken to ease the right hand curve off
the north end of this bridge. The overbridge No. 171A between 110 and
111 km, 2 km north of Waipukurau, was replaced with a new straighter
structure about five years ago in order to give motorists an easier and
safer passage over the railway line at this point.  The freezing works
at the south end of Waipukurau was built new in 1985 and closed in 2011,
although the buildings are still in use, possibly as coolstores, but it
is unclear if the sidings, which run parallel to the PNGL before
joining to it in the Waipukurau yard, are still used.

Part of the 1957 S&I diagram for Waipukurau. As with Marakeke, the
bridge was included within station limits due to being so close to the
yard. This is still the case today under Track Warrant with the Distant
signals replaced by approach boards.

Waipukurau maps using the 1962 aerial photos. A few things to be drawn in the station yard like the goods shed. Don’t know if there was still an engine shed at this date but there is a long skinny shed near the turntable with rail into it so there may have been.