The Mount Egmont Branch Line

摘要

By the turn of the 20th century there was a shortage of metal in Taranaki suitable for road and railway building, and also rocks for riverbank and foreshore protection. Suitable stone was located on the eastern side of Mount Egmont and in 1901 the Manganui Roads Board and the Stratford Borough Council lobbied the Minister of Railways to construct a railway line to these deposits.rnThe site for a quarry was located about 3,500ft high on the eastern side of Mount Egmont and in the general area of the Waipuku Hut at the end of what is now York Road between Midhurst and Tariki. In the early 1900s the only practical way to move heavy bulk material in any quantity over a significant distance was by rail. Surveys made in 1903 revealed it was feasible to link the proposed quarry site to the main New Plymouth -Wanganui railway line by a branch railway.