June May See Trains to Wairoa

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 2

June May See Trains to Wairoa

PROGRESS MADE WITH MOHAKA VIADUCT (.Special to “Times”) NAPIER, Feb. 5. Granting no unforeseen delays there should he a daily railway service between Napier and Wairoa by the end of not Juno. All that now require* to be completed on this section of the Eatt Coast railway is th. 3 laying of two or three miles of line between Kote maori and the Mohaka Viaduct, and the completion of the second half of the viaduct itself. This latter job should be finished by the end of May. On the Wairoa-Gisborne section, however, much requires to be done, including the comj>letion of several tunnels, the biggest a mile long. About 800 men are working on this portion of tho line, which involves so much work that it will probably be two years yet before trains ply their way between Wairoa and Gisborno. Work on the viaduct at Mohaka—tho second highest in the world and the largest railway trestle in the Southern Hemisphere—is proceeding up to expectations, and slowly but steadily tho giant steel towers are creeping upwards from tho Mohaka river at the bottom qf the gorge. This will provide railway travellers with tho most thrilling experiohee of any to be gained on Now Zealand railway journeys, for tho bridge crosses the Mohaka river at a height of nearly 1000 feet. Workmen are now engaged in laying the remaining two or three miles of lino between Kotemaori and the Mohaka Viaduct —a section which, eveu before the earthquake, was never completed. A freight train supplying workers on the viaduct is running between Wairoa and the trestle. The Napier-Putorino freight train leaves Napier every Saturday at 7.3 Q a.m., returning at 4.30 p.m. It seldom leaves Napier without a generous load of requirements for farmers whose pro perties are spread along the route of the northern railway, seldom does it return to Napier, moreover, without a generous cargo of sheep or cattle or produce from the country.