The Branch Today
Remnants of closed railway lines diminish and disappear as a result of natural and human activity, but some relics from the Fairlie Branch's operating days still exist, most notably the 2.5 km of restored trackage still in use by the Pleasant Point Museum and Railway. At Washdyke, the first few hundred metres of the branch were retained as a backshunt and to provide access to an industrial siding, and the track currently remains in place. For much of the line's length from Timaru to Fairlie, the formation can be seen making its way through the rolling countryside, and abutments and piles still stand at the site of some bridges. One bridge itself still stands, near Winscombe. Loading banks still exist at the site of Levels, Waitawa, Sutherlands, and Cave stations. Levels also still possesses its goods shed and Waitawa has the remnants of a platform, and water vat foundations remain in Levels and Tengawai. Beyond Eversley, the formation that was constructed but never used can still be seen and is particularly clear near Kimbell.
The Fairlie Rail Trail is planned to use the route once used by trains and to start work by 2015.
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Famous quotes containing the words branch and/or today:
“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
—Marc Chagall (1889–1985)
“A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things.... What we dread most, in the face of the impending débâcle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable.... We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quakey.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)