Midland Line, New Zealand

The Midland Line is a railway line on the South Island of New Zealand. It connects the cities of Christchurch and Greymouth by a spectacular route through the Southern Alps and has nowadays mainly tourist importance. The railway line is 212 km long, single-track, electrified and not invested in the track width of 1067 mm used in New Zealand.

Route

The route begins in the east actually in Rolleston, the trains use from Christchurch to Rolleston the track of the Main South Line. Until Springfield The Canterbury level is crossed before the route gains altitude and reaches the ravine at the Waimakariri River. The track has five major bridges, five viaducts, seventeen tunnels, the longest of which with 8.5 km of the Otira tunnel is which cuts through the mountains and between Arthur 's Pass and Otira. The highest point of the track is reached at Arthur 's Pass, from here on, the route cuts back towards Greymouth.

Architectural History

First discovery of gold on the west coast in the early 1860s led in 1866 to set up a coach connection through the Southern Alps via Arthur 's Pass. At the same time in the districts of Canterbury and Nelson first ideas about a railway link arose. First, a connection of Hokitika on the Malvern Hills was scheduled to be in the east to create a connection to the White Cliffs route. This should cross the Alps on the Browning Pass, this route was not followed up quickly due to technical reasons. Further plans pursued a more northerly route through Ada's passport or Amuris pass, but in 1883 it was decided to perform the route via the Arthur 's Pass. The government refused, despite the expected transport of wood and coal first to build a path to be uneconomical from, but allowed private companies to build this circuit. So in 1885 formed a private company, the New Zealand Midland Railway Company, which started the construction in 1886. By 1895, only 120 km could be built when the company went bankrupt. As of 1900, the construction work was continued by the government. By 1900, the route from east to Otira was built and from the west to a temporary station Broken River. The line was then built in 1910 to Cass and 1914 to Arthur 's Pass.

Between Otira and Arthur 's Pass, the construction of the 8.55 km long Otira Tunnel was required, which has a gradient of 1:33. Tunnel penetration was in July 1918, and on 4 August 1923, the total distance was inaugurated.

As an operating steam locomotives was hardly possible for the length and the gradient of the tunnel section of Otira to Arthur 's Pass was electrified with a length of 14 km, with 1500 V DC voltage. For use in this section were five electric locomotives of Eo series. These locomotives were replaced in 1968 by five new locomotives of Ea (Toshiba, Japan) series. These in turn were in use until 1997, and it was decided not to proceed with the electrical operation, but only use diesel locomotives. For air-conditioning of the tunnel a combined solution from fans and a door on the lower side of the tunnel ( direction Otira ) was used. Today, the coal trains are covered with diesel locomotives of the DX series.

Transport supply

Passenger

The only regular connection of the passenger traffic on this route is the TranzAlpine train, which runs daily.

Freight traffic

The track has an important role in freight transport. So there are several coal trains on the line, other economic goods that are transported here, wood, cement and dairy products ( operating the Westland Milk Products plants in Hokitika ).

Swell

• Geoffrey B. Churchman and Tony Hurst: The Railways Of New Zealand - A Journey Through History, HarperCollins Publishers ( New Zealand ) (for 1st edition 1990), transpress New Zealand Wellington ( 2nd edition 2000), ISBN 0-908876 - 20-3.