STEAM LOKIES AND STEAM NAVVIES




In 1928 at age ten I met my first little locomotives (lokies). Four steam navvies were engaged in carving away high ground in preparing the site that would take the railway station and marshalling yards from the centre to the outskirts of Palmerston North. These machines were built by well-known makers of the times namely "Thew" "Osgood" and "Marion". Depending upon the makers' preferences they travelled on rails or crawler tracks or wide steel wheels that rolled on massive timber pallets that the machines themselves picked up from behind and placed on the ground in front as they advanced. The vertical fire-tube boilers were mounted at the rear of the swiveling structures to counterbalance the jibs and scoop buckets. Each of these grunty machines had three duplex engines: one to drive the bucket hoisting winch, one to feed the bucket into the cut and one to rotate the bucket over the spoil trucks. The machinery was semi enclosed with side panels and curved iron roofs. When an excavator was being repositioned one of the engines was clutched to provide traction to the carrying wheels and on the machines on broad steel wheels one axle was steered by link and screw mechanism operated from the ground by hand-wheel.

Temporary ever extending rail tracks followed the excavation work and two small steam locomotives served the four navvies by removing the trucks of spoil and placing empties up to them. These two energetic puffers were typical of many owned by the New Zealand Public Works Department". One was a 7.5 ton 0-4-0 side tank "Barclay" and its mate was a 0-4-0 side tank machine of 8 tons built by "Fowler". The tracks over which they worked were always hastily laid and very kinky, but by virtue of their very short wheelbases the little engines kept to the rails. The loads were hauled to a marshalling yard of more substantial track where a larger locomotive hauled assembled trains out to formations on the line of railway that needed filling and leveling. This locomotive was a 24.5 ton 0-6-0 "Barclay" with side tanks the tops of which sloped off to the front for about half their lengths.

At the beginning of 1929 the Palmerston North deviation project was curtailed and construction staff and machinery were sent to Gowan Bridge on the extension of the Nelson-Glenhope railway where work was in progress building the link from Glenhope to Inangahua It was rugged country following the course of the Buller River. The scene of operations that concerned us as a family was located 2.4 km south of Gowan Bridge and 2 km north of the junction of the Buller and Owen rivers. The PWD married workers' camp was located 400m south of the present state highway bridge over Granity Creek near its junction with the Buller River.

Heavy earthworks were under way and one "Thew" steam navvy and one "Barclay" 0-4-0 side tank loco and several spoil trucks were on the job. The navvy excavated a cutting in the north bank of the Granity creek gully and the small loco hauled the spoil across a temporary bridge on the site now occupied by the present state highway bridge to earth fills on the terrace above the Buller River. These fills were 4 to 6 meters high and teams of specialists constructed timber trestles along the line of the formation. The loco with its side dumping trucks cautiously rolled out onto these trestles that creaked and groaned under their weights. When the fills were up to rail level the trestlework was extended. The timbers for these were cut from the local beech forest and the footings, piers, beams, cross ties and braces were skillfully hand-sawn, adzed, bored and bolted together. These operations were so close to our cottages that when the loco and dump trucks rolled out onto the trestles one could inspect the undersides from the kitchen windows. The Murchison earthquake occurred at this time (1929) and shortly after for political reasons the project was stopped. In the late 1950s the whole line was closed down and dismantled.