LOCOMOTIVE Ja1271 will be passing through Te Kūiti from Taumarunui on September 25, and returning for visits on October 7 and 9. PHOTO STEAM INCORPORATED
A STEAM engine train will return to the main trunk line with stops at Te Kūiti around local body election weekend. Locomotive Ja1271 will be hauling a passenger train through from Taumarunui on September 25, and returning for stops in Te Kūiti on October 7 and 9 – the day before local body election day and the day after. Preparations for the arrival of about 500 additional lunchtime customers on October 7, will be discussed at a Legendary Te Kūiti meeting this week. The organisation’s spokesperson Abi Rawles said among other things they will be discussing putting flyers on the excursion train from Hamilton, but that would be a decision for individual businesses to make.
The train was expected to arrive about lunchtime on October 7 and depart for Hamilton about an hour and a half later. There was another excursion arriving on Sunday October 9, but that was arriving at 6pm and was staying for only an hour – and passengers would have a meal on the train, Abi said. For both visits the locomotive will be turned on the turntable and re-coaled and watered. “People will be able to come down sit on the bridge and see the steam engine Ja1271 wander off to the turn table and do that,” Glenbrook Vintage Railway general manager Tim Kerwin said. “We’re just running a series of steam train shuttles. We come from a small town, little old Waiuku. The idea is we base a train in the city and we take it to a small town location somewhere. We’re saying get off the train and go and have a look around town. “It’s good to promote those smaller towns, give the local businesses [an opportunity] to get 500 people coming through their shops. That’s what we do, as a charitable trust. It’s written on the side of the train ‘Support local, shop local’ It’s what we do.”
Locomotive Ja1271 belongs to Wellington-based Steam Incorporated which is celebrating its 50th year of operation. GVR has been in operating 52 years but is celebrating the centenary of the opening of the Waiuku line in 1922. “GVR and Steam lnc are very similar in what we do, we’ve always had a good relationship,” Tim said. “I’m a third generation GVR person. I came out here in 1997 when I was 10 and started volunteering, and I’ve been here for the last four years. My background’s in rail and I’ve been in the rail industry for 18 years. “We are the third generation in these clubs and Steam Inc are much the same. They have got a bunch of guys there around their late 20s, early 30s, so this is stuff that used to happen back in the 80s and 90s with the older generation. “So that’s the whole purpose for it really, to celebrate their 50th, celebrate the 100th anniversary of our line being opened and then celebrating our friendship. ‘We are kindred spirits, we have maintained that relationship for that time. “It’s our generations’ turn. The old boys who built these places passed them onto us so now you are seeing the third generation from both groups getting together and doing what they used to do 20, 30 years ago.
“There a lot behind it. For most people it is just a train ride, and that’s fantastic, but what created it is the energy and youth of these groups passing the baton over to the next generation.” Locomotive Ja1271 was designed by New Zealand Railways and built at the NZR Hillside workshops, Dunedin in 1956. It was withdrawn from service in 1971 after suffering a collision that was considered uneconomic to repair. It had run only some 416,000 miles (669,487km). It was sold to Steam Incorporated in March 1978 and subsequently towed to Paekakariki, where it sat in the yard beside SH1 for years before being rebuilt. It returned to service in October 1997 and has now had a longer working life with Steam Inc than NZR.
