Ohai State Coal Mines

In the 1870s, coal was discovered in Ohai. The mines had their own 2ft gauge railway, where they would take coal from the mines to Ohai. This was where the Ohai State Coal Mines was formed. Coal production boomed in the area in 1925 when a private railway was built from the terminus of the New Zealand Railways Departments Wairio Branchline to Nightcaps to provide more efficient transport of coal, which was operated by the Nightcaps Coal Company, it opened not long after the states railway reached Wairio in 1909. In 1918, a proposal was made to build another line to coal interests around Ohai, and the construction of this line was fiercely opposed by the Nightcaps Coal Company, fearing a loss of business. However, construction was approved in July 1919 with a deviation through Morley Village, considered part of Nightcaps. The first section of the line, including the part serving Morley Village, opened on 1 September 1920. Ohai was reached four years later, and in January 1925 and the Ohai Railway Board was formed. The Nightcaps Coal Company ceased to operate, and they handed over their railway line to the Railways Department, who dismantled it in 1926 as the Ohai Industrial Line was capable of catering for traffic from Nightcaps. The line is one of the few remaining rural branch lines out of many that once existed throughout New Zealand. In 1934, this line was further extended beyond Ohai to Birchwood, but the terminus had reverted to Ohai by the time the line was incorporated into the national rail network on 1 June 1990. The line is now called the Ohai Line, and it is one of the very few survivors of a formerly extensive rural branch line network. In 1990 the ORB was taken over by the New Zealand Railways Corporation, and the line still serves coal trains between Invercargill and Nightcaps.

Only one industrial steam loco was built and operated for the ORB.

All of these locos were originally built for the ORB, but were later either sold to other industrial users, or placed into preservation straight away.

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