Northland: Steam Train at Kawakawa

At Kawakawa there is a railway station. It is the home of the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway (there is a video on their website) about which I blogged around this time last year in the post First Stop Kawakawa where you can find more informtion about the railways and the steam engine Gabriel.  This year we arrived at a convenient time and on a day when the train was running.  So we went for a ride.  And we had a very enjoyable hour or so doing it before Pauline drove me down to Whangarei for my afternoon flight home to Napier.

Awaiting restoration

Gabriel

Ready to roll

 Kawakawa's Star Hotel opened in 1879.

A bit of detail for Mark

The end of the line and the change over

 The Long Bridge - the longest wooden curved bridge in the Southern Hemisphere apparently.

 The restoration work is under way in conjunction with the cycling organisations who will share it.

A long shot to the final curve on the far side from where the train journey ends at the moment

Slightly spooky looking right at the engine (which is, of course, going backwards at this stage).

 I think the driver should be looking where he's going!

The train shares the High Street with the traffic

Steam Locomotive Ja1271

Those of you who have followed this blog for more than a year will be familiar with the significance of Art Deco weekend to Napier as the Art Deco capital of the world with a programme of events which has something for everyone and lots of it too.  It is also the weekend when the Napier earthquake of 1931 is remembered and the efforts of those who re-built the city from the ruins are commemorated.

As so much of the weekend is based around outside activities and the city centre is mobbed during the whole weekend the weather we've had for the previous weeks and the forecast for the weekend did not bode well.  As luck would have it the sun shone out of a clear(ish) blue sky for the two days and the rain didn't start until about 10.30pm tonight (Sunday).

I have enough material and photos - even allowing for all the posts I've done in previous years - to amuse myself (and hopefully you as well) for days and perhaps even weeks to come.

I shall start with one of the most popular things which I had never seen before despite the fact that it makes many journeys from Napier during the Art Deco week.  Yesterday I managed to catch it when it was at Napier Station prior to it one of it's journeys.

'It' runs under the romantic title of Steam Locomotive Ja1271 a 4-8-2 110 ton beast designed by New Zealand Railways and built at their Hillside workshops in Dunedin in 1956.  It was withdrawn from service in 1971 and returned to heritage operation in 1997.

 

I should add that the children in the last photo are ostensibly in period costume!

One For Adrian

Yet another memory from the Art Deco Weekend.

Steam Engines

Art Deco Weekend is such a splendid occasion for so many things. One of the events which goes on for the week is trailer rides round town drawn by various steam engines. Here are two of them.