History
For the first century of its existence, the role of the railways in Christchurch was to connect the port at Lyttelton to the productive areas around Christchurch on the Canterbury Plains. A network of branch lines connected these areas to the Main South Line and Main North Line, which provided access to the port via the Lyttelton rail tunnel, enabling farm supplies to be delivered and food crops, wool, meat, and livestock to be shipped to market. From the 1930s, rail faced increasing competition from road transport, leading to the piecemeal closure of the branch line network up to the 1960s.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In Christchurch
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (18911960)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (19131995)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moments comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)