Moutohora branch
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The Moutohora Branch was a branch line railway that formed part of New Zealand's national rail network in Poverty Bay in the North island of New Zealand. The branch ran for 78 km approximately North-West from Gisborne into the rugged and steep Raukumara Range to the terminus at Moutohora. Construction started in 1900, and the line was opened to Moutohora on 26 November 1917.
Built to the New Zealand standard 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge the line was originally intended to become part of a railway to Auckland via Rotorua, and later as part of an East Coast Main Trunk Railway running from Gisborne to Pokeno by way of Opotiki, Taneatua, Tauranga, and Paeroa. This comprehensive scheme never came to pass, and the branch line it subsequently became was closed in March 1959.
The branch had four names during its lifetime. Initially it was authorised as a Gisborne to Rotorua line, and labelled as such in the Public Works Statement until 1910. From then, while isolated from the rest of the NZR system, it was known as the ‘Gisborne section’ of the NZR. Once Gisborne was linked to the rest of the NZR network in 1942 the line became the ‘Motuhora Branch’, to be renamed the ‘Moutohora Branch’ in 1952, when the New Zealand Geographic Board decided on this spelling for the line’s terminal locality. This article uses the final terminology and spelling throughout.
The first report on proposals to link Gisborne and the rest of Poverty Bay to the outside world by rail was made in 1886, but nothing eventuated at that time. In April 1897 the East Coast Railway League was established to press for the development of rail connections, and in 1899 the Government announced that Gisborne was to be connected to Auckland by a line of rail. Work on the line started in early 1900. On 14 January the then Minister for Railways, the Joseph Ward, turned the first sod. The first 20 km of the line ran across coastal plains with few obstacles, and the line was opened to Kaitaratahi on 10 November 1902.
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