The First Stop, Kawakawa

Kawakawa is famous because of its toilets:  the Hundertwasser Toilets about which I blogged on The Great Adventure in 2010.   To be honest, apart from its location on State Highway 1 and with some decent cafés and the said toilets, Kawakawa has little to offer except, and it's a big except, for the fact that it has a railway running down the middle of the main street and into a sidings with a rather well maintained station and a steam locomotive which should appeal to Mark and Adrian.

A real live steam loco built by Peckett and Sons Ltd of Bristol in 1925 and numbered 1730.  It's a 4-4-0T 3ft 6 in loco run by the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway.  The engine is one of five similar 4-4-0T engines and was originally one of two which went to the Schull and Skibbereen Railway, Ireland, named "Allen" and "Gabriel" (after Mount Gabriel).  Regauged in 1926 to 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) and sold to Portland Cement, Whangarei, New Zealand.  It was given to Bay of Islands Scenic Railway in 1985.  If those dates are correct I'm not sure why the nameplate on the locomotive bears the date 1927.

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!