The Feilding and District Steam Rail Society, also known as Feilding Steam Rail, is a railway preservation society located in Feilding in the Manawatu region of New Zealand. The society has restored or is presently restoring a number of locomotives and wagons once used on New Zealand's national rail network, with its star attraction currently being a WAB class tank locomotive, WAB 794. The society also has X 442 and F 163. Although nine members of the F class are preserved, this is the only one in mainline running condition. The society also possesses two small diesel shunters, DSA 227 and TR 13, along with a large mainline diesel locomotive, DA 1401, and a varied collection of rolling stock including both passenger and freight wagons.
The society's depot includes the turntable from Palmerston, a town in north Otago in the South Island, as well as the Taonui station building that used to be located near Feilding on the North Island Main Trunk Railway at the junction with the short-lived Taonui Branch.
Feilding Steam Rail operates excursions from its Feilding base to locations such as Wanganui, Ohakune, Dannevirke, and Pahiatua. When severe rainfall and floods caused destructive slips in the Manawatu Gorge in 2004, the society operated sightseeing trains through the Gorge.
Famous quotes containing the words district, steam, rail and/or society:
“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Blotting the sun
Stinging the eyes.
The hot seeds steam underground
still alive.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“Old man, it’s four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly any bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin rail and the wornout tread.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)