Lyttelton Rail Tunnel
| Lyttelton Rail Tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Portal of the tunnel at Heathcote
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| use | Railway tunnel | |||
| traffic connection | Main South Line | |||
| place | Christchurch / Lyttelton | |||
| length | 2595 m | |||
| Number of tubes | 1 | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | KiwiRail | |||
| release | December 9, 1867 | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| South portal | 43 ° 36 ′ 11 ″ S , 172 ° 43 ′ 3 ″ E | |||
| North portal | 43 ° 34 ′ 50 ″ S , 172 ° 42 ′ 32 ″ E | |||
Map with all coordinates: The Lyttelton Rail Tunnel , originally Moorhouse Tunnel that connects Christchurch with the port of Lyttelton in the region Canterbury on the South Island of New Zealand .
It is the oldest railway tunnel in New Zealand that is still in operation and is used by the Lyttelton Line , one of the area's first railway lines.
When it was completed in 1867, it was the world's first tunnel through an extinct volcano and, at 2.7 km in length, the longest in New Zealand. Its opening made New Zealand's first public railroad, the Ferrymead Railway , obsolete.
history
background
The first settlers in the Canterbury region had only two options for transport between the port in Lyttelton and the Canterbury Plains : a mule track over the Port Hills or transport by ship over the sandbar at Sumner and then up the Heathcote or Avon Rivers.
The Canterbury Provincial Council , founded in November 1853 , therefore set up a commission four months later to investigate the possibilities of better transport connections. Only a road connection was found feasible via Sumner Road, which was to receive a 320-meter-long tunnel under Evans Pass . There were two alternatives for a rail link: a direct route down Heathcote Valley and then through a 2.5 km tunnel to the coast of Lyttelton, and a less direct route over the Avon Heathcote Estuary , then along the coast to Sumner, from where a shorter tunnel should lead to Gollans Bay and Lyttelton.
The inability to commit to a clear recommendation of one of the options in their final report led to the railway plans being temporarily put on hold. However, this exacerbated the traffic problem to the extent that in 1858 Superintendent William Sefton Moorhouse got the provincial council to revisit the issue. The council provided £ 4,000 for engineering services and a tender for construction.
The commission previously set up under WB Bray examined the two railway lines in more detail. The provincial engineer Edward Dobson preferred the route via Gollans Bay , as it could be used as a roadstead with its sufficient depth of water without dredging. But there were other factors against this route, such as the fact that it bypassed Lyttelton, then a growing economic center of some importance. In addition, the area is exposed to the wind and there was not enough suitable land for port facilities in the bay. Although the commission considered this route to be the best to the port, they decided against a more precise survey, since their task had been to look for a route "to Lyttelton".
The report by George Robert Stephenson , a consulting engineer for the Provincial Commission, however, favored the direct route. It is the shortest route that offers access to all important locations, construction would be 32% cheaper than the longer route and it would be cheaper to operate and maintain. The only advantage of the route across Gollans Bay would be a projected construction time of three to five years for the direct connection. The commission accepted Stephenson's report and asked him to find a suitable English candidate as general contractor.
Superintendent Moorhouse was a strong proponent of the tunnel project. During the election campaign for re-election as superintendent of the province of Canterbury in 1857, the tunnel became a central theme, as Moorhouse's competitor Joseph Brittan spoke out against the idea. Moorhouse was strongly supported by the citizens of Lyttelton. Of the province's 12,000 residents, including 3,205 in Christchurch and 1,944 in Lyttelton, both candidates received 206 votes each from Christchurch. Overall, Moorhouse won with 727 against 352 votes. Moorhouse started the project on July 17, 1861 with the groundbreaking ceremony.
construction
Stephenson hired UK contractors John Smith and George Knight to complete the project in five years. A price of £ 183,051 for the tunnel and £ 190,551 for the tunnel and both portals was agreed. Smith & Knight dispatched a salesman, foreman, and 12 miners to New Zealand in late 1859.
The miners were driving exploratory passages into the mountain at both ends of the tunnel. 180 m from the Lytteltoner end they encountered rock, which was much more difficult to remove than they had suspected from samples previously sent to England. It was concluded that it would be impossible to complete the contract for the agreed amount and an additional £ 30,000 was requested to complete the work. After consulting with the provincial engineers, the Canterbury government decided not to continue working with Smith & Knight. Smith & Knight was later found to be in serious financial trouble at the time, which provides a different explanation for the £ 30,000 recovery.
Since Smith & Knight were unable to perform their contract, Moorhouse sought the approval of the council for two measures: firstly, to complete the tunnel along the length of the test excavations left by Smith & Knight, and secondly, to find another contractor to complete the tunnel. The council agreed to the first demand, also as the contract with Smith & Knight had stated that it would take responsibility for the foreign workers brought into the country to build the tunnel should the project be abandoned. The second question was decided negatively for the time being, as the financing had to be clarified first.
In the meantime, the provincial engineer Edward Dobson submitted his own plan to complete the building. The biggest problem with the previous work had been water penetrating through the tunnel front, which made the drilling work more difficult and slowed down the work. Dobson suggested digging additional tunnels on both sides to drain the water. The work started with 340 men and an estimated cost of 42,800. After only 88 meters and 6 months of work, the next contract partner took over.
Moorhouse continued to advocate the railway line, suggesting that the government take out a loan to build it and contract a "competent and responsible company" to do the work. On behalf of the council, Moorhouse traveled to Melbourne , Australia in January 1861 . When he returned in May, he was able to report success on both issues.
Of the three offers that Moorhouse had received, the two with the lowest prices were discarded, leaving Holmes & Richardson . With his signature on April 16, 1861, George Holmes undertook to fulfill the contract according to the offer, provided that the conditions on site correspond to the description. He traveled to Canterbury with Moorhouse to sign the actual contract. The contract envisaged a cost of £ 188,727 for the tunnel and a total price of £ 195,000 with the two portals. During the term, the amount for improvements to the Lyttelton portal was increased by an additional £ 5,000.
Work continued from both sides of the tunnel. When a total length of 1844 meters was reached, the construction of the Canterbury Southern Railway began as a connection. The breakthrough came on May 28, 1867 from Lyttelton. In mid-November, provisional rails were laid in the tunnel. The first locomotive, No. 3, passed on November 18th. The first freight train pulled by the same locomotive followed a week later, the first passenger train on December 9th.
However, the tunnel was only declared "finished" in June 1874. By that time the government had spent an additional £ 20,710 on "upkeep".
The Railways Department considered expanding the tunnel with a second tube in 1914, but this was not implemented.
business
When the colonial government decided a few years after the tunnel was put into operation to set a uniform gauge for the entire colony, it made some exceptions for existing railway lines in other gauges, but new buildings generally had to be made in the new standard narrow gauge. The exceptions also included the railways of the province of Canterbury, for which the Canterbury Gauge Act was passed by Parliament . This law provided for a third rail to be laid instead of re-gauging the existing lines so that the rolling stock with a 1067 mm narrow gauge could also use the rails. Instead of accepting the inconvenience of such a solution, the provincial government had a narrow-gauge track laid between Addington and Lyttelton next to the original track in 1600 mm wide-gauge . The narrow-gauge line reached Christchurch on March 7, 1876 and Lyttelton 34 days later.
Since the traction was carried out with steam locomotives, there was smoke nuisance in the tunnel. In August 1909, the Railways Department tested a conversion of the Wf 433 locomotive to an oil burner that produced less smoke. During the test phase, the locomotive pulled 450-ton freight trains through the tunnel. Although smoke was actually reduced, the idea was abandoned because the additional costs outweighed the benefits.
A few years later the line between Christchurch and Lyttelton was electrified. After the Otira tunnel had already been successfully electrified in 1923 and an expert opinion recommended the electrification of the network in the suburbs of the four largest cities in the country, the tunnel was electrified using the same system as in Otira. The overhead line with a voltage of 1500 V went into operation in 1929. Since the tunnel was originally built for the larger broad gauge vehicles, the tunnel was large enough to be able to integrate the overhead line without any modifications. The first electric train drove from Christchurch to Lyttelton on February 14, 1929. In 1970 the EC class electric locomotives reached the end of their service life. With the decline in rail traffic due to the opening of the Lyttelton Road Tunnel in 1964 and the almost complete conversion of rail traffic to diesel locomotives, the overhead line was dismantled.
Todays use
The tunnel is owned by ONTRACK and operated by KiwiRail . Today it is only used by freight trains. The tunnel survived the two earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 and so the coal trains and the wagons loaded with containers continue to drive the tunnel between the port of Lyttelton and Christchurch.
Web links
- Lyttelton Rail Tunnel on the Christchurch Library website
- Article and pictures from New Zealand Railways Magazine 1929
Individual evidence
- ^ Historic Lyttelton Buildings - Cornish Miners' cottages. Christchurch City Council, archived from the original on October 9, 2011 ; accessed on February 8, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).
- ↑ a b c d W. A. Pierre: Genesis Of The Railway . In: Canterbury Provincial Railways: Genesis of the NZR System . The New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society, Wellington 1964.
- ↑ Lyttelton Rail Tunnel: 125th Anniversary . In: commemorative booklet publisher = The Ferrymead Trust . August.
- ^ Canterbury Provincial Council . The Community Archive. Retrieved March 20, 2010.
- ↑ Robin Bromby: Main Lines - South Iceland . In: Olphert, Lorraine (Ed.): Rails That Built A Nation: An Encyclopedia of New Zealand Railways . Grantham House Publishing, Wellington 2003, ISBN 1-86934-080-9 , p. 50: "In 1914 consideration was given by NZR to duplicating the tunnel."
- ^ WA Pierre: The Battle Of The Gauges . In: Canterbury Provincial Railways: Genesis of the NZR System .
- ↑ Geoffrey B. Churchman, Hurst, Tony: Canterbury . In: The Railways of New Zealand: A journey through history , second. Edition, Transpress New Zealand, Wellington 2001, ISBN 0-908876-20-3 , pp. 176-177.
- ^ Lyttelton Rail Tunnel . In: New Zealand History . Ministry for Culture and Heritage , December 9, 2016, accessed April 29, 2019 .