Construction
The Waimea Plains Railway was built in order to improve communication between Dunedin and the Lake Wakatipu district. At the time, construction of the Otago Central Railway had barely begun and the only other way to reach the region by rail - the most efficient form of transport in the days before modern road transport - involved a detour south via Invercargill. The Waimea Plains Railway Company was formed in 1878 in New Zealand under the District Railways Act of 1877, and began construction on 11 January 1879. The easy terrain meant construction was swift, with the last rail laid on 24 May 1880 and the official opening a couple of months later on 21 July.
The Waimea Plains Railway Company was part of several companies speculating in land settlement in Southland set up by politicians including Robert Stout and William Larnach, along with the New Zealand Agricultural Company (set up in London in 1879) and then the New Zealand Land and Loan Company. By 1879 these companies were precarious financially, and the whole scheme was “little short of a scam”. Bourke says that George Grey not agreeing to purchase the Waimea Plains Railway Company in 1879 was the reason for subsequent fall of the Grey ministry. This and several other private railway companies were later purchased by the new Stout-Vogel ministry. Stout’s financial affairs were covered up in 1893 by Richard Seddon, Stout’s rival in the Liberal Party, provided that Stout left politics.
After some disputes with the government over ownership and distribution of profits, the government acquired the line under the District Railways Act in 1886 and integrated it in the New Zealand Railways Department on 13 November 1886, according to New Zealand Railways Geographical Mileage Table 1957 and the Encyclopaedia Of New Zealand 1966. (David Leitch and Brian Scott give the date as 31 March in Exploring New Zealand's Ghost Railways, while Geoffrey B. Churchman and Tony Hurst state 30 July in The Railways Of New Zealand: A Journey Through History.)
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