Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 1, 1929.)

The Builders of the Line

The Builders of the Line.

The forest, what there is of it, and the numerous sudden gulches in the pumice highlands, are the distinguishing features of the run as far as Tarukenga, where the train pulls up for a minute or two before descending to the shores of Rotorua Lake that glimmers soft-blue eight hundred feet below. These dry ravines gave the engineers and contractors for page 26 the line-building much trouble in the early Nineties. These two heavy sections, Ngatira to the top of the plateau and thence to Tarukenga, were let to two big contracting firms, Dan Fallon & Sons, and John McLean & Sons, and they carried through their jobs well, with Maori labour working side by side with European. The standard wage for navvies in those times was seven shillings per day—which went as far as double the money goes to-day. Mr. Neil McLean, now living in Wellington, personally supervised his firm's work on the section from Mamaku to Tarukenga. In 1893 he had about 170 men building the permanent way. There were some huge works for those times—rock cuttings nearly seventy feet deep, and embankments of close on a hundred feet.