Steaming ahead to 40th celebration

A blast from New Zealand’s rail past, and a nod to the founding of Brayshaw Park, will celebrate forty years with a moving party.

The Blenheim Riverside Railway – the longest two-foot gauge railway in New Zealand – will mark its 40th anniversary trip on Saturday, 29 November with a cavalcade of narrow-gauge railway engines and carriages making a return trip from Brayshaw Park to Beaver Station in central Blenheim.

Over 140 supporters are expected aboard the rails travelling to and from Brayshaw Park, while president John Orchard urges people to celebrate beside the tracks from 2pm to 4pm along the Taylor River banks for the next two Sundays.

The Riverside Railway was founded on June 19, 1985, as John’s interest, and now 40-year presidency, came “almost by default”.

“I was a teacher at Marlborough Boys’ College for 20 years and then ran the heritage education programme from the Museum around Marlborough schools, but I’ve always been interested in history and technology.

“I didn’t really want to take on a project of this size, I wanted to join Rotary, and I’ve never had enough time to join Rotary, because this has been my community service club”, John laughs.

“One extremely generous man Ralph Denton left $500,000, split between the Vintage Farm Machinery Club and the Historical Society, who decided to spend $50,000 on rail as Norm Brayshaw had wanted a railway that went from this park into Blenheim.

“Being on the Historical Society committee at the time I volunteered to shift the spare rail coming to Spring Creek into Blenheim, next thing I know we’re working out how we will go about getting locomotives and carriages and buildings and I ended up being the President of the new society specifically set up to manage the job.”

John says the two-foot gauge is a “real worker’s gauge”, but as the railway celebrates its 40th anniversary, he says that, like many other volunteer organizations, it is “forever short of people to do the little things”.

“I have helped do welding, woodwork, metal work, painting, I rebuilt one of the carriages to allow for an under-floor carrying equipment in it, but nowadays I spend too much time on administration than I’d like to admit.

“We’ve got a growing proportion of several of Marlborough’s population who are retired, but a smaller amount interested in volunteering which saddens me.

“We’re always advertising for new members, from people to be ticket clippers to fully train up as drivers and all the little things in between, and that love starts by coming and having a look.”