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
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