Photo: Gumdigger carriage A255 at Christchurch on 27 January 1950, near the end of its revenue-earning service. Photo: JAT Terry.
Further major components required for our 1880s Gumdigger Carriage restoration project have been made available to the Rimutaka Incline Railway.
In 2008 Wayne Haste donated a number of key components from carriage A189 along with an underframe – the start point for the project. The Trust stored these components for eventual use in a rebuilt Gumdigger carriage, pending completion of its storage and workshop facilities at Maymorn.
In late 2014 the Trust was offered one half of another Gumdigger carriage body - A255, which was located on a farm near Dunedin. This was a reasonably rare opportunity to obtain further Gumdigger carriage components, a major boost to the carriage project. The carriage body was required to be moved urgently and the Trust had to take swift action to remove it from the property to ensure that it was not demolished.
A255 was built in 1884 as a low roof centre balcony composite car. Gumdigger carriages were built between 1882-1887 in New Zealand Railway Workshops. This particular example is one of only 3 or 4 such carriages in existence, others being located at MoTaT, Auckland. A255 was built at Addington Workshop, Christchurch, completed in September 1884. It was converted to second class accommodation in 1927, and written off at Addington 31 March 1952. It continued on in non-revenue service reclassified and renumbered as Ea 2568, finally written off on 12 September 1964. It was then sold and relocated to a farm in Milton. The other main body component was located on another farm in the Dunedin area and has also been donated to the Trust for the project. The two halves of the carriage were reunited in Dunedin in May 2015, and traveled by rail from Dunedin to Wellington from 12-16 May, They will be placed onto the carriage underframe and into safe, dry storage in our rail vehicle shed. Once the workshop is finished we plan to start work rebuilding the underframe, bogies and compartments.
Donations towards the restoration of the carriage will be gratefully received.
A set of patterns have been made for our historic Gumdigger carriage A 255, built at Addington Workshops, Christchurch in 1884.
Number, class and smoking plate patterns have been fashioned from MDF material, sealed and painted, ready for casting in brass. A big thanks to Clive Davis, project manager for the A 255 carriage rebuild, for locating the drawings and commissioning the work.
News to share on our key projects. Our volunteers have put in a lot of time over the winter months, including upgrading yard track that will connect to the workshop, rust repairs for the cab of Ohai Railway Board No.1, repairs and repainting two of our fleet of ballast wagons, Gumdigger carriage frame repairs plus some essential rail vehicle shed work.
Work has started on the long-term project to restore 1884-vintage Gumdigger carriage A255 back into service. During the past year a conservation plan has been drafted, outlining the history of the carriage, detailing the fabric of the vehicle it its current state, and a project plan formed for its restoration.
An 1884-vintage "Gumdigger" type carriage is destined to run again on the Rimutaka Incline Railway. The Trust has recently been offered the two carriage body halves of Gumdigger carriage A255, which have been transported from Dunedin to its base at Maymorn, Upper Hutt. A255 was built at Addington Railway Workshops in 1884, saw service in and around Christchurch until 1964.
The first half of Gumdigger carriage A255 in transit at Dunedin in December 2014. Photo: Clark McCarthy.
The two halves of Gumdigger carriage A255 were reunited in Dunedin in May 2015, and traveled by rail from Dunedin to Wellington from 12-16 May, They will be placed onto the carriage underframe and into safe, dry storage in our rail vehicle shed. Once the workshop is finished we plan to start work rebuilding the underframe, bogies and compartments.