Tawa Historical Society Incorporated

The Tawa Historian

Newsletter #29 – September 2012

Dear members,

A brief update as to where we are regarding the Tawa Railway Station. As you know, the station building will be demolished, and current thinking is that the demolition will occur towards the end of the year.

The Greater Wellington Regional (GWRC) has been working on a replacement building. Three models were offered to a group of interested people (Tawa Community Board members and Tawa Historical Society people mostly), and their choice was to go with a model which reflects the shape and nature of the old station. It will have verandahs for both tracks, and may even use railway lines as the means for the framework of the verandahs, as does the present station. GWRC is also proposing to include a series of display boards (perhaps eight) and some of them could feature photos or designs which will recall Tawa’s past railway stations and other features (perhaps the sidings) which will link the new building with the past. Shelter, and good lighting and seating are also priorities.

Yesterday I visited the station with Malcolm Sparrow of the Tawa Community Board to see whether there are signs from the current station which ought to be preserved. The GWRC and its contractors seem to have certainly got the message that the local community must be consulted and kept informed, and in the regard, Malcolm Sparrow is doing a fine job, and Ngaire Best is offering good support. Hopefully, what looked like a heritage disaster will be transformed to give the community a railway station which appropriately acknowledges our past.

Lastly, I can still report that, inside the station building, valuable and sensitive signalling equipment continues to be protected by a tent, thanks to 30 years of neglect by those who, in the 1980s and thereafter, purchased the NZR from the Government but failed to maintain their assets.

With kind regards