http://www.ormondvillerail.org/

Theres a website all about the station, they sell souvineers & books etc. Get in touch with them, im sure they could help you.

Cheers for that Peter, I sent them off an email. I was going to use Google earth but the latest photo of Ormonville is obsured by cloud! I tried using the travel back in time function but the older photos are too blury to make out the track plan. I'm planning on going for a drive this weekend to have an actual look around the place.

Take a measuring tape!

Go and stay in the station the night - it's a great get-away spot with some interesting wagons & loads in the yard. SWMBO & I stayed there a couple of years ago - it was a bit cheaper then ! There's some interesting memorabilia in the station and a good collection of rail vids to watch. You may even meet up with Paul Mahoney ( author of The Era Of The Bush Tram In NZ ) as he stays there to work on projects occasionally. Post some pics of what you find.

Yup, I'll post some pics up. Taking my two year old daughter with me so dunno if I'll be staying the night. Besides I hear the station has a resident ghost!!

I stayed there a few years ago. It was brilliant!

Didn't see any ghosts but the wife jumped out of bed when a freight came through in the early hours.

If you can get access to the station, there are plenty of folders and photo albums covering the history of the station and yard including track plans.

Next Sat the 11th I'm going - thats a working bee weekend at the site.

Went road tripping to Ormondville today;

Point work Northern entrance to yards. Ormondville viaduct is about 2km away from this point.

Point work Southern (Dannevirke) end of yard. Sorry I havn't worked out how to rotate the darn pics.

Views of the station and platform from north to south. The baggage trolley is securely attached to the building with a motorcycle lock!

Rear of the goods shed.

Took this pic on the Ormondville-Matamau road from the car while on the move. A small halt in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if the local farm kids used to catch the train into Dannevirke to attend Highschool back in the day? Can't think of any other reason for its existence. Saw another more basic version further down the road which was just a lean to shelter.

All and all a very interesting day out (also had to fit things around the women folk - visited a million craft shops). Unfortunatly I couldn't gain acess inside the station as it was locked up. I talked to one of the locals, who told me yes, today was meant to be a working bee at the site, but it looked like everyone had been put off by the weather. Apparently some of the volunteers come from as far away as Wellington.

 The trackwork is a lot more complex than I expected, but still I reakon it would be worthwhile to build as an NZ120 module.

Nice pics Iddy. I especially like the small halt building.

If you made this as a module would you build it as it was in the past or as it is today (incl. the preservation collection) ?

Er . . . well I was actually thinking of building it as kind of an alternate universe. I've started to build myself a DC class loco and then my next project is to build a couple of AO coaches and an FM class van and paint them up in the late 80s/early 90s Bay Express livery (dark blue with red and white stripe along sides). This is for sentimental reasons - I remember travelling on the Bay Express heaps back during this era.

As the preservation society didn't come about till the late 90s, I was planning on twisting the truth just a little bit and pretend it had started back in the 80s instead. I would also like to run a Grass Grub set as well - of course these disapeared from the HB line well before the preservation society came about.

Ahhh! Mystery of the halt solved;

Photograph, Ken Cassells

The tiny Matamau Station is another of Ormondville Rail Preservation Group’s various charges. This station was once the railhead of the Hawkes Bay line, and has its own distinct history. However, its elevated status quickly reduced just to ‘actual’, rather than also ‘sentimental’.

 

Background

New Zealand suffered a period of economic depression and high unemployment in the early 1880s. For example, within a few days of opening the Hawkes Bay line to Makotuku (including Ormondville) in August 1880, the Government halted line’s construction. The next section, intended to open to Tahoraiti (near Dannevirke Golf Course), contained complications such as Maori-owned land and very rugged country. Still, the Government had also turned its attention to developing the Wairarapa line from Wellington.

Around 3,000 people, a sixth of Hawkes Bay Province’s population, then lived in the Seventy-Mile Bush, and the loss of a major source of income, plus a further delay to the long-awaited railway, caused considerable shock in the district. Angry protest meetings resulted in petitions to Parliament and a number of recent Scandinavian and German immigrants living at Norsewood began planning to abandon their struggling little farms to re-migrate to the apparent prosperity of America. Certainly some headed for Salt Lake City at that time, encouraged by visiting Mormon missionaries (who did not stop long in the less sympathetic Ormondville).

By late 1881, the Government again moved to continue the Hawkes Bay line. However, where originally two large viaducts on the Makotuku-Tahoraiti section of line were to be part of the last phase of work, they were now to be under construction from the start. At least one was estimated to require 18 months to build.

Dannevirke residents and businessmen wishing to exploit valuable timber in the Dannevirke-Tahoraiti area, including the Napier Chamber of Commerce, placed pressure on the somewhat reluctant Authorities to open part of the line early. Thus in February 1884, the Minister of Public Works promised the local MP (who was also a future Tahoraiti sawmill owner) that a mid-day train would run to Matamau, as soon as the tracks were complete to that point and a station built. Thus on 30 June 1884, Matamau Station became operational. The whole Makotuku-Tahoraiti section of line opened on 1 December 1884.

In addition to the station, Matamau gained other amenities in the early 1880s. However, these also lost their status when the railhead moved on. Despite the pro-Temperance Norsewood Licensing Board cancelling all local hotel licenses in June 1884, the Matamau Hotel remained open to accommodate travellers coming to and from the Matamau railhead. However, Publican Badderley announced in January 1885 that due to the licensing issue, he would move his hotel building to Mangatera, then Dannevirke’s railway station. Matamau Hotel, therefore, closed the following month, while Matamau Post Office closed in March 1885.

 

The Station

The original 1884 portion of the building is the shelter shed shown furthest from the camera in the photo. The nearest portion, the tablet operator’s office, was added in about 1911 when signals were installed at this station. This signal system operated on the line before that time however. A floor plan confirms that the tablet office was in place by 1914 and its arrival may have coincided with the extension of the station’s crossing loop around 1914. A ticket office was installed in the tablet office in 1915. Then in 1949, the old lamp room from Makotuku Station was sawn off that building and transferred to Matamau to serve as a goods shelter. The station never had a stockyard.

At 1,016 feet above sea level, Matamau is the highest station on the Hawkes Bay line. The line is steeply graded on either side of Matamau, and at times in the past assisting engines worked trains to that point.

In 1967, Matamau was converted to a switch-out tablet station and its staff reduced from three to one. It officially closed on 27 September 1981. The station’s platform was removed between 1948 and 1969, when the tracks were altered.

 

Significance

The link between Ormondville and Matamau Stations is twofold. It is the closest listed historic station to Ormondville, while for about seventy years, trains shuttled tablets back and forth between the tablet machines within the two stations. Dannevirke was at the far end of Matamau’s other section of track.

The 1884 portion of the building is one of only two surviving examples of a Vogel era ‘Class 6’ standard station. The other is at Solway, near Masterton. Matamau is also the only example of a ‘tablet station’ to survive on New Zealand’s railway system.

 

Present Status

Work on Matamau Station has proceeded somewhat slowly due to a shortage of workers and the need to complete other jobs at Ormondville. At present, it also lacks electricity and basic amenities. However, attention has been paid recently to improving the station grounds. 

(Article from from the Ormondville Preservation Societys Website)

That sounds like a great idea. What about a Ka led excursion passing through (incl. the smoke effects at the end) !

Ka 942 storming through Ormondville