Foxton Branch - Construction

Construction

At the mouth of the Manawatu River, the settlement of Foxton was seen in the 1860s as a possible port for the Manawatu region. Roads often became treacherous and impassable in bad weather, and as the Manawatu River was not navigable far inland, a more dependable route than the roads was necessary so that the region could receive imports and export its products, particularly timber. Due to poor financial conditions at the time, a tramway built with wooden rails rather than a railway was proposed in 1865 as a cost-effective mode of transport. Not even this was affordable at the time, and it was not until Julius Vogel announced his "Great Public Works" policy in 1870 that construction was finally approved.

As planned in 1865, the line was built as a wooden-railed tramway, with construction commencing in 1871. On 20 August 1872, a steam locomotive constructed by the Dunedin firm of Messrs R. S. Sparrow and Co. was delivered and operated on the completed portion of tramway; this was the first New Zealand-built locomotive to run. The line was completed to Palmerston North on 25 July 1873, a distance of 40 kilometres, and soon proposals were made to extend it to Wanganui. However, by 1874, the inadequacies of wooden rails were becoming apparent, and after an attempt at relaying the line with iron rails in February 1875 did not provide the durability required, the decision was made to relay the line with steel rails to railway standards. The land through which the line ran was generally flat, with the Oroua River the only serious obstacle. It was crossed with a 56-metre long bridge. The line was formally re-opened as a railway on 27 April 1876.

In 1886 the Wellington and Manawatu Railway (WMR), the private company established to build the line due to the government's inaction, opened from Wellington to the Foxton line at Longburn, near Palmerston North. The government's original plan had been to extend the Foxton line down to Wellington, but the WMR followed the most direct route to Palmerston North, bypassing Foxton. The Foxton line effectively became a branch line from Longburn, though it remained the southern terminus of the government railway until 1908, when the WMR was purchased and incorporated in the North Island Main Trunk Railway linking Wellington and Auckland.