Waikaka Branch

The Waikaka Branch was a branch line railway of the Main South Line that ran through agricultural and gold-mining country in Southland, New Zealand. It was constructed in 1907 and 1908, and was operated by the New Zealand Railways Department until its closure in 1962.

The Waikaka Branch was the last of the minor branches of northern Southland to be authorised, though proposals had existed for decades beforehand. Poor transportation access was causing farm values to depreciate while wagoning costs were prohibitive, and settlers petitioned the government for a railway line to improve their economic prospects. The town of Kelso had already been linked to the Dunedin-Invercargill portion of the Main South Line at Waipahi by the Tapanui Branch, but a prominent proposal supported another link, this time from Kelso via the Waikaka Valley to Gore on the Main South Line. In 1878, this line was approved by the government and an official survey of the route was anticipated in early 1880, but governmental inaction meant that the proposal lapsed and by 1886, residents of the Waikaka Valley had lost hope that a railway would be built. The prospect of a railway was not seriously revived until 1897 when a community financing initiative in the North Island was approved to construct a line from Paeroa to Waihi (later part of the East Coast Main Trunk Railway). Pressure paid off in 1904 when a branch line to the village of Waikaka was included in the government's Railways Authorisation Act, but official procrastination meant construction did not commence. The through line from Gore to Kelso still had support; in February 1905, Southland business interests urged the government to begin construction of the Gore-Kelso line and to link the Tapanui Branch with the Roxburgh Branch, as trade that they felt should rightfully benefit Southland was instead benefitting Otago due to superior railway access to Dunedin. No significant action was taken to achieve this proposal, but later in 1905, a company was established by local residents to advance half the construction costs of the approved branch to the government, and this led to the passage of the Waikaka Branch Railway Act. When the promised money eventuated, construction of the line commenced on 18 April 1907, with the first sod turned by the Acting Prime Minister, Joseph Ward. The branch left the Main South Line just east of Gore at a locality called McNab. Locals under supervision rather than contractors or engineers built the line twenty-one kilometres up the valley to Waikaka, and it was completed in late 1908. On 26 November 1908, the line was handed over to the Railways Department and the official opening was held the following day.

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