Group Closer To Securing Heritage Railway Route In The South

A group of Southern train enthusiasts are full steam ahead with trying to secure 7km of railway line between Lorneville and Branxholme, to start a heritage railway route.

The Southern Steam Trust has been eyeing up the Invercargill-Ohai route for several years, and now KiwiRail has pulled out, the group is hoping to lease the first section off them.

Chairman and project manager Lindsay Buckingham said the group was also in early discussions with owners of the old Makarewa freezing works site, a base to store and operate their restored locomotive, diesel shunt and carriages from.

In 2019 the group salvaged the old New Zealand Railways locomotive - the F150, and have spent the past three years and $540,000 working on its restoration, thanks to the many community funders and businesses around the city.

Lindsay said they would still need to find another $400,000 to complete the project and aiming to finish in late 2026.

“We have been slowed by additional work uncovered on the boiler and unplanned replacement of the main driving wheels. These two item have increased our budget and therefore funding requirement.”

The group also recently acquired a 1958 diesel shunt locomotive that was donated by Talleys in Ashburton, and had been sitting in storage for years.

“They are like hen’s teeth and hard to find,” he said.

Lindsay said as soon as the group is set up at its new base in Makarewa and more established, they will start work on refurbishing the shunter.

“We have recently also taken ownership of a 14m long span from the old Invercargill railway station pedestrian overbridge…This was removed circa 1975 from the railway station to make way for the then new station building. We rediscovered the span deep in the Western Southland bush where it was serving as a stock bridge."

The F150 was one of only 88 F class steam locomotives in the country, and served on New Zealand Railways from October 1882, until its retirement in 1958 in Invercargill.

Built in Glasgow Scotland by Dubs and Co, the F150 was gifted to the Invercargill City Council in 1962, and installed in the Newfield playground along with a WW2 Valentine tank.

Both were enjoyed by successive generations of Invercargill children until it was removed in 1975.

Then it was extracted and taken to the Ocean Beach Railway in Dunedin where it was partly pulled apart, and the Southern Steam Trust found it completely in pieces in a railway yard in Ashburton in the 1980s.

Lindsay said they were only looking to secure the first 7km of the railway line because of maintenance such as bridges, that was outside of their budget.

It would be expected that the locomotive would take public trips once a month, with the long term plan to also run trips from Invercargill to Bluff three times a year as well.

“We can operate more regularly on our own heritage trail railway using our own fully qualified staff, rather than having to use KiwiRail staff when operating on the KiwiRail network.”

Other trips in the pipeline included from Invercargill to Edendale for the annual Crank Up Day. More info: southernsteam.co.nz