Ohotu railway station was a station on the North Island Main Trunk in New Zealand.[1][2] When the station closed to all traffic, on 10 August 1959, it had a shelter shed and passenger platform.[3] It was part of the 13+1⁄2 mi (21.7 km) Mangaweka to Taihape section, opened by the Prime Minister, Richard Seddon, on 21 November 1904.[4] The station was across the Hautapu River from Torere village, which had been surveyed in 1896.[5]

Only a single track remains through the station site and there is little sign that there was ever a station there.[6]

The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "place of [the] fifteenth night of the moon" for Ōhotu.[7]

Name

From 1908 Egmont Box Co had a sawmill at Ohutu, sometimes called Utiku,[8] or Torere.[9][10] When the track laying reached Ohotu in April 1904, it was described as Torere Junction.[11] From 5 January 1915 Egmont Box Co's siding, was renamed Ohotu[12] and it then became a booking station handling passengers and parcels.[13] The name of the post office changed from Ohutu to Ohotu in 1925.[14]

Timber

From 1908 until its closure in 1926,[14] Egmont Box Co's mill cut roughly 42,000,000 board feet (99,000 m³) of kahikatea, mainly for butter boxes,[15] in addition to some rimu.[8] Its tramway was extended as the bush was cut,[8] until it was cut out in 1921 and the mill closed.[15] The centre span of the 120 ft (37 m) Howe Truss bridge,[16] 160 ft (49 m) above the river, built of timbers up to 16 in (410 mm) thick,[17] which had been built by Sykes the & Shaw in 1911,[18] developed a crack which made it dangerous[15] to run their Climax locomotive[11] over it, so trucks were pulled over with a winch.[15] When the bush was cut out the bridge was sold for scrap. During demolition in 1923 it collapsed, killing one man and injuring another.[17]

References

External links

• Photo of Egmont Box tramway bridge in 1920s