Kurow Branch - Operation

Operation

The Kurow Branch's operations in its first few decades of existence were unremarkable from those typical of many rural New Zealand branch lines. A single mixed train that carried both passengers and freight would depart Kurow for Oamaru in the morning and return in the late afternoon. The train took roughly three hours each way. In 1926, the branch became the location for the trial of one of New Zealand's two steam railcars, the Clayton steam railcar, offering a passenger timetable of 1 hour and 45 minutes between Oamaru and Kurow. However, the railcar did not prove popular and it was replaced by a regular carriage passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive on 10 November 1928. This new train ran to the railcar's schedule but was cancelled as of 12 July 1930 due to the effects of the Great Depression. Special passenger trains still ran on occasions, notably in 1931 when they took sightseers down the Public Works Department's line from Kurow to the then under construction Waitaki Dam. For a few years, the PWD used its own rolling stock to offer a passenger service to school children who lived along the line and attended classes in Kurow. This service ceased with the other operations of the line in the mid-1930s; the line formally closed in late 1936 and the track was removed in April 1937. Prior to this, NZR had closed their section of track from Kurow to Hakataramea on 14 July 1930.

From its opening until the 1960s, the line was operated by steam locomotives, initially of the F and T classes, later the WF and WW, and then from the late 1940s, the A and AB. By the 1940s, traditional forms of traffic such as livestock and agricultural supplies were declining as competition from road transport increased, and the primary freight became goods for the Upper Waitaki Hydro Scheme. On 25 March 1947, passenger provisions were withdrawn and the mixed trains became goods only. In the late 1960s, the line's motive power was dieselised when the DJ class was introduced and trains were reduced to operating thrice weekly, then just on Mondays and Thursdays. The line's future rested upon its role as the railhead for the dam construction, and even with just two trains a week, sometimes one would be cancelled. When the final project was completed in the early eighties, the line ceased to have a sufficient reason to exist and it was accordingly closed on 5 June 1983, with the final train running two days later to collect rolling stock still on the line.