Waiotira is a locality in Northland, New Zealand. Whangārei is to the northeast. Tauraroa is about 9 km northeast, and the Waiotira Stream flows southwest to join with the Omaru River.[1][2]
Waiotira is on the North Auckland Line and it is the junction for the Dargaville Branch. The first trains operated in 1921 during construction of the North Auckland Line: they carried schoolchildren between Waiotira and Waikiekie, and allowed residents to visit Portland and Whangārei. The first through trains ran between Auckland and Whangarei in 1923. Waiotira became a junction in 1928 when the first stage of the Dargaville Branch opened to Kirikopuni.[3] Trains from Waiotira could run all the way to Dargaville from 1941.[4]
Waiotira became an important intermediate station on the North Auckland Line. It had an island platform where passengers could transfer between mixed trains to/from Dargaville and the Northland Express or its 88 seaterrailcar successors. It also had a railway yard and facilities for line maintenance staff. The railcars ceased in 1967, as did the mixed trains to Dargaville; a mixed service between Maungaturoto and Whangarei called at Waiotira until its cancellation on 15 September 1975.[5] Most station facilities were removed in the 1980s. The tracks on the west side of the platform and some of the yard have now been lifted and the Dargaville Branch was mothballed in 2014; goods trains continue to run through Waiotira on the North Auckland Line.[6]
^Peter Dowling, ed. (2004). Reed New Zealand Atlas. Reed Books. pp. map 7. ISBN0-7900-0952-8.
^Roger Smith, GeographX (2005). The Geographic Atlas of New Zealand. Robbie Burton. pp. map 27. ISBN1-877333-20-4.
^André Brett and Sam van der Weerden, Can't Get There from Here: New Zealand passenger rail since 1920 (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2021), pp. 52–53.
^Brett and van der Weerden, Can't Get There from Here, p. 123.
^Brett and van der Weerden, Can't Get There from Here, p. 207.
^Brett and van der Weerden, Can't Get There from Here, pp. 267–68.
