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From today through to mid January, freight trains will travel through the Wairarapa and up to Woodville.
This will enable KiwiRail to do some essential work on the section of track between Wellington and Waikanae - which will result in parts of the North Island Main Trunk Line being completely closed to all rail traffic.
The works are aimed at removing a bottleneck on this line for freight and passenger services.
An extra 6 freight trains a day will travel through the Wairarapa - at speeds of between 70kms and 90kms an hour and will be running 24 hours a day in both directions.
These speeds will be higher than freight services that have travelled on this section of line over the past few months.
So KiwiRail is running a public awareness campaign in the Wairarapa/Manawatu region reminding people of the increased risk during this period and of the need to take care at all times around the rail corridor.
5 Comments
Wasn’t there talk of scraping the line from Woodville to Masterton?
Yes, I think that section of the Wairarapa line is still “under review”, which probably means going to be closed.
The intensive use of the Wairarapa line when the Main Trunk between Palmerston North and Wellington has to be closed for whatever reason shows how short-sighted is Kiwirail’s proposal to close the whole line north of Masterton.
KiwiRail’s proposal? Steven Joyce’s proposal!
KiwiRail presumably knows full well that letting a system rot year after year until it’s unable to compete with a constantly upgraded road system is not in their best interest. But because roads make so much money for the government (yeah, right), rail isn’t given enough money to keep maintaining and improving their system. That was true under previous governments, and remains true now, possibly even more so.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is what KiwiRail is forced to do.
I’d bet a million bucks that the line will not be closed
That’s how much KR spent on removing speed restrictions, strengthening bridges so they could run freight up there during the block of line to do all the work at north south junction and there is more work to do. The junction isn’t very stable, tunnels need daylighting and some how double tracking is needed (a train load of cash is needed)