The old Kawatiri Junction railway platform

Going south towards Christchurch on State Highway 6 about half an hour before you reach the town of Murchison, there’s a turnoff pointing to St Arnaud and Picton. You can see the sign in the background of this photo, and on the right-hand side, the road continuing south to Murchison. The railway platform at Kawatiri Junction operated for just over five years, from 1926 to 1931, and was the southernmost point in a railway line that ran from the port at Nelson. The original plan for the railway was to run from Nelson to Cobden on the West Coast, and by 1912, it ran to Glenhope, just a handful of kilometres north of Kawatiri. Work on the Glenhope-Kawatiri section was slow and stalled often due to lack of money, the demands of the First World War and, in the 1920s, a lack of manpower and suitable equipment.