Mangapehi railway station | |||||||||||
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Mangapehi station in 2018
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| General information | |||||||||||
| Location | New Zealand | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 38°31′01″S 175°18′28″E / 38.516878°S 175.307722°E / -38.516878; 175.307722 | ||||||||||
| Elevation | 285 m (935 ft) | ||||||||||
| Line(s) | North Island Main Trunk | ||||||||||
| Distance | Wellington 449.47 km (279.29 mi) | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
| Opened | 1 April 1901 | ||||||||||
| Closed | Passenger after Sep 1980 Goods 31 March 1987 | ||||||||||
| Rebuilt | 8 January 1950 | ||||||||||
| Electrified | June 1988 | ||||||||||
| Services | |||||||||||
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Mangapehi[1] (or Mangapeehi)[2] was a flag station on the North Island Main Trunk line, in the Waitomo District of New Zealand. It was 5.89 km (3.66 mi) north of Poro-O-Tarao and 5.15 km (3.20 mi) south of Kopaki.[3]
Ellis & Burnand had a sawmill at Mangapehi from 1901[4] until 1968.[5]
In 1950 the station was moved almost a kilometre north, away from the sawmill,[6][7] at a cost of £13,405.[8] In that year it had 23,636 passengers, 4 staff and railed 148,093 board feet (349.46 m3) of timber and 28,633 sheep and pigs, earning £3,256 from passengers and £85,473 from freight.[9]
A tramway was built into the bush to the east by Ellis and Burnand, initially with 11 mi (18 km) in 1903,[10] and extended further in 1904.[11] By 1909 it was over 14 mi (23 km), which had cost an average of over £1,000 per mile.[12] At 15 mi (24 km) it was slightly longer in 1922.[13] and by 1939 there were over 26 mi (42 km) of tramway[14] and 58 km (36 mi) when trucks took over in the 1950s.[5]
Gradients were up to 1 in 15, requiring the use of geared Climax locos from 1905,[15] which replaced horses[16] on wooden rails.[5] It also linked the station to the coal mines at Maniaiti / Benneydale.[6] The 1904 Climax is now in the Tokomaru Steam Engine Museum,[17] after ending service in 1954 and being briefly joined by another E & B Climax from their Manunui tramway.[18]
Coal from the Mangapehi mine used the line between 1936 and 1952.[5]
