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Journal of the Nelson and Marlborough Historical Societies, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1987

The Nydia Incline Today

The Nydia Incline Today

Although all useable materials were removed from the Marlborough Timber Company's operation 60–70 years ago, energetic historians, with a day to spare, can follow the transport system from the wharf site to the mill sites. Close to the wharf site, the Department of Conservation has set up a photo interpretation display. At low tide, lines of volcanic basalt ballast from the Auckland scows, which carried timber from the 1870's Brownlee mill, are exposed. So also are the stumps of the wharf piles, corroded iron ware and broken glass of early beer bottles.

The line of the tramway, from the wharf to the base of the incline is now indistinct and shows best in artificial cuttings, decaying bridge timbers, and lines of rough wooden sleepers, in a beautiful section of punga forest. A fragile remnant of timber work, used to bridge a swamp, is protected by fencing.

On both inclines, nature has masked the scars of the millers. A thick layer of leaf litter, rapid regeneration of pungas, supplejacks and epiphytes and severe pig rooting on the lower slopes, have blurred the outlines and covered equipment. Obvious relics include worn out rails, steel rollers and bearing holders, scattered bricks, coal and sleepers. The more observant will spot the insulator cups of the winch signal telegraph, high up on the trunks of some trees.

Small terraces, with scattered bricks, coal and iron, mark the sites maintenance huts. The rollers needed greasing, otherwise the wire cable would wear or break. A railway waggon axle, protruding from a living tree, is evidence of such a breakage.

The steam hauler sites have substantial quantities of machinery, roofing iron, wire cable and rubbish, but the mill sites have been under pasture for many years and are difficult to locate.

Sections of this transport system are now visited by several hundred school pupils each year, in an effort to educate people about our past and the need to treat our historic sites with respect.

If all visitors continue to leave the relics on the site, perhaps the engineering efforts of John Craig will, one day, be compared to those who constructed the famous Denniston incline near Westport.