When its much admired railway station turned 100 last month, Dunedin teamed up with train enthusiasts to wheel out some restored steam and diesel locomotives and indulge in a little nostalgia.

Dunedin had a big birthday party at Labour weekend. The city's railway station – reckoned to be New Zealand's most photographed building – turned 100, and thousands of citizens and visitors turned out to party.

It's a great big gingerbread castle of a building, a grand Edwardian edifice built in solid southern stone, with turrets and towers to the designs of New Zealand railway architect George Troup, known as Gingerbread George for his florid stations. It is the city's fourth station building on or near the site and a symbol of the time when Dunedin was the nation's business capital.

Unlike most railway stations around the country that fell victim to the purges of the 1980s and 1990s, Dunedin's was bought by the city council and restored, and now serves as the headquarters for the Taieri Gorge Railway, whose trains use the remaining track of the former Otago Central Railway. The station is also home to the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame and a bar and restaurant.

Celebrations organised by the Taieri Gorge Railway and city council began on the Saturday morning of the holiday weekend with a procession of locomotives that had worked around Dunedin since the 1870s. The first to work in the city, Josephine, is tucked safely in a large glass case at the Otago Early Settlers' Museum, near the station, alongside Ja1274 – the last steam locomotive built in New Zealand, at Dunedin's Hillside workshops.

In their place were seven active representatives of the steam locomotive with connections to the city, plus five diesels – the oldest three years older than the youngest steamer in the parade.

Among the historically significant locomotives on show was K88, Washington, which, with Josephine, brought the first train from Christchurch into Dunedin in 1878. A hundred years later it was dug out of a Southland riverbank, where it had been dumped, and restored to working condition.

A large, powerful tank locomotive, Wab794, first of the show machines built in the city – in 1927 – originally worked the steep routes to Oamaru before pulling suburban trains in the Hutt Valley. The other Hillside original on show was Ja1271, one of the last handful of steam locomotives built in 1956. Rescued as a wreck from Dunedin in the late 1970s, it was restored at Steam Incorporated's Paekakariki base.

Once lined up alongside the station's very long, wide main platform, the crowds flocked to inspect the vintage engines. Children peered into glowing fireboxes and hissing appliances, while older people renewed old friendships.

"I used to fire this engine," said one aging visitor to the cab of Ja1271. Fetching his former NZR cap badge from his pocket, he said: "I found it this morning. We used to work it through to Invercargill. It was a good engine."

Said another: "I helped build this engine." He'd worked at Hillside and as an apprentice had machined brass fittings.

The Saturday afternoon was spent with the various larger locomotives taking long, packed trains of vintage carriages including those from the Steam Incorporated train from Paekakariki and others from the Taieri Gorge Railway – to Sawyers Bay, north of the city, while the smaller, more ancient engines pulled shuttle services between the station and the Settlers Museum.

Sunday dawned to more busy steamy experiences. Ab663, from Paremata businessman Ian Welch's Mainline Steam operation at Plimmerton, began proceedings, taking a Taieri Gorge train to its Middlemarch terminus where a restored turntable was used officially for the first time.

Meanwhile, back at the station a sold-out shuttle service led by Ja1271 took visitors to the Hillside workshops, where wagons and carriages are produced.

"Welcome home," the site supervisor called out as the engine descended the steep grade into the yard of the works where it had been built 50 years ago.

The focus remained on Dunedin on the holiday Monday, with the Paekakariki-based locomotive taking a long train of classic red Steam Incorporated carriages, together with a similar number of yellow Taieri Gorge Railway cars to Invercargill and return.

By Tuesday, all the visiting locos and their trains began making their return home.

Taieri Gorge Railway operations manager Grant Craig says the buzz around the city was such that they'd have to do it again. Maybe they'll have to come up with another reason for a party. The station only turns 100 once.


SOURCE: By ANDY MACIVER