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CONSTRUCTION The Waimea Plains Railway was built in order to improve communication between . STATIONS The following stations were located on the Waimea Plains Railway (in brackets is the distance from the junction with the Main South Line in Gore):
OPERATION When the Waimea Plains Railway opened, New Zealand was slipping into the Long Depression and traffic only justified trains three days a week. As the Kingston Branch ran on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the Waimea Plains Railway ran on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. When the national economy improved in the 1890s , so did services on the line, and three days a week, a passenger express would run from Kingston to Gore; this became known as the " Kingston Flyer " and a tourist service now replicates this on 14 kilometres of track between Kingston and Fairlight on the Kingston Branch. Although the preserved Kingston Flyer uses two Ab Class locomotives, the initial Flyers used K and V class engines. Passenger numbers declined in 1937 when regular services were withdrawn on the Kingston Branch, and although the possibility of Railcar s was considered, it was ultimately decided to terminate the line's passenger services on 17 September 1945 . Like the Kingston Branch, the Waimea Plains Railway had regularly seen a significant number of passenger excursions on top of normal services throughout its history, and these continued for over a decade past 1945. 1956 was the last year passenger trains ran each way on the same day over the Waimea Plains, and the last excursions came during the next year's Easter holiday period. Freight trains initially operated out of Lumsden and ran five days a week until 1956 . Services were re-organised to operate from Gore in 1959 and operated thrice weekly. In 1930 and 1952 , the line was not conmsidered to be a branch and thus was not assessed in the branch line commissions of those two years, but in 1967 , it was announced that the line's future was under review. The district negotiated a reprieve of three years, promising extra traffic, but less than 24,000 tonnes was carried annually and closure of most of the line came on 31 March 1971 . The sixteen kilometres of trackage from Lumsden to a silo in Balfour remained open for the transportation of wheat, but the quantity was not enough to justify the continued existence even of the truncated portion of the line and it was fully closed on 15 January 1978 . THE BRANCH TODAY Although both nature and human development have taken their toll on what remains of the Waimea Plains Railway, some remnants continue to survive. Despite the fact that some of the line's formation has been destroyed for farming purposes, much of it can still be traced between Lumsden and Gore. Both goods shed and passenger shelter still stand at Kingston Crossing, while at the site of the old Waimea station, two points levers are positioned by the old loading bank. Another loading bank exists, this one at St Patrick's and is complete with a mounted nameboard. In Balfour, the sealed station platform is now a part of a children's playground, and in the former junction town of Lumsden, the station building is used as a tourist centre. The other junction station in Gore is of course still busy as a stop on the Main South Line between Dunedin and Invercargill, though its passenger service was cancelled in 2003 . EXTERNAL LINK
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