Palmerston North–Gisborne Line
Railway line in New Zealand / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Palmerston North–Gisborne Line (PNGL) is a secondary main line railway in the North Island of New Zealand. It branches from the North Island Main Trunk at Palmerston North and runs east through the Manawatū Gorge to Woodville, where it meets the Wairarapa Line, and then proceeds to Hastings and Napier in Hawke's Bay before following the coast north to Gisborne. Construction began in 1872, but the entire line was not completed until 1942. The line crosses the runway of Gisborne Airport, one of the world's only railways to do so since Pakistan's Khyber Pass Railway closed.
In conjunction with the Moutohora Branch that ran north from Gisborne between 1900 and 1959, the line was originally intended to connect to the East Coast Main Trunk, described in 1875 as the North Island trunk line,[1] but the difficult inland section between the Tāneatua Branch in the Bay of Plenty and the Moutohora Branch was never completed.
The line has not carried passenger trains since October 2001, when the Bay Express service was cancelled. The northern portion of the line, from Napier to Gisborne, was reviewed as part of KiwiRail's 2010 turnaround plan. It was effectively mothballed north of Wairoa due to four significant washouts during a storm in March 2012. The whole Napier–Gisborne section was officially mothballed (but not closed) in December 2012. The Napier–Wairoa section reopened for forestry traffic in June 2019.[2][3] A slip near Whareongaonga worsened in November 2021,[4] but a 2019 feasibility study had proposed repairs for that and other slips and concluded that there was an economic case for reopening the line.[5] Cyclone Gabrielle closed the line north of Woodville after 13 February 2023. Bridges washed away were 176 in Waipawa, 212 and 216 north of Hastings, and Waitangi bridge, 217, north of Clive and some other areas of track were undermined.[6] Reopening to Hastings was on 3 April,[7] but 5 piers of bridge 217 were washed away[8] which delayed reopening of the line to Napier until 15 September.[9] The line to Wairoa suffered extensive damage and will take even longer to reopen.[10] In December 2023 the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, indicated that the Napier-Wairoa line wouldn't be reopened, saying, “My personal view is that railway is a low priority and it is something that we shouldn’t be progressing. I’d sooner take the money from that and go and invest it in upgrading the roads and, and making investments in flood protection and other things.”[11]
In 2023 local bodies in the region proposed that the Wairoa-Gisborne section of the line be re-opened at an estimated cost of $80.5 million; including a new 500m tunnel to bypass a section of track washed away when a hillside collapsed in November 2021. KiwiRail said that the reinstatement cost estimate was "optimistic". The section from Napier to Wairoa was reopened in 2018.[12]