Know your town

Martinborough’s lost railway
When John Martin set out the plan in 1879 there was to be a railway to Martinborough with the terminus in the Centre of town.

An amusing quote from a paper held at the Wairarapa Archive ‘ The hills around Martinborough, Nga waka a Kupe, look like large canoes. Kupe is said to have turned his canoes upside down to dry and his men had gone to sleep. It is said ‘when will Kupe wake up?’ When the first train comes whistling into town Kupe and his men will look down and say ‘Hullo it is time to get up, Martinborough is awake at last’.

As it happened the first sod for the railway wasn’t turned until June 20th 1914 – one hundred years ago this month. The townspeople put on their ‘Sunday best’ and the town decked out with flags and bunting. Both the Martinborough and Club hotels tied Ti Kouka ( Cabbage trees) to the veranda posts – these being the Town Board’s emblem.

A motor bus was hired to carry the dignitaries to the site west of where the catholic Church now stands. The towns people made their own way to stand behind a wire fence erected to keep the officials and ‘others’ apart.

A special wheelbarrow had been produced in which a chosen boy took the first sod to Martinborough School. Both were destroyed in a fire at the school in 1919.

All the pomp was for nothing as six weeks later the First World War broke out. After the war the project was rekindled with a private company being set up to carry it through. However by 1924 road transport had greatly improved and the idea of a was railway finally abandoned.