Our Trip To Ranfurly

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Closing Down Farm Gear Sale

We decided to go to a clearing sale just out of Ranfurly (we ended up buying a Stallion 50 Teat calf feeder). The Scenery was an artists dream! We went way inland to Central Otago. We went through the famous Middlemarch (where all the handsome batchelors go to that famous singles dance where they are looking for a wife).

The History of the Taieri Gorge Railway:

The Taieri Gorge Railway comprises 60 km of the Otago Central Railway of the New Zealand Railways, started in 1879 and closed in 1990.

It's history is both the history of the Otago Central Railway and of the Otago Excursion Train Trust, which ran it's first excursion train on the railway in 1979 and became so succesful that they bought 60 kms of the railway when it closed in 1990, forming todays company and its operations.

The Otago Central Railway branched from the South Island Main Trunk at Wingatui, 12 kilometres south of Dunedin, and ran through Middlemarch, Ranfurly, Omakau and Alexandra to Cromwell in the heart of Central Otago, 235 kilometres from the Junction .

More recently on the Taieri Gorge Railway:

The Minister of Railways announced that the Central Otago railway line would be closed on 30 April 1990.
Simultaneously the Mayor of Dunedin announced that the City Council would buy the line through the Taieri Gorge and as far as Middlemarch provided the community raised $1 million to finance the project. This would enable the Otago Excursion Train Trust to continue to operate excursions and The Taieri Gorge Limited, which had become one of Dunedin's leading tourist attractions.
By July 1990 $1.2 million had been raised and thus the 60 km Taieri Gorge Railway became New Zealand's longest private railway. In 1995 the close relationship between the City of Dunedin and the Otago Excursion Train Trust was cemented with the formation of the Taieri Gorge Railway Limited, a Local Authority Trading Enterprise jointly owned by the City and the Trust, which now operates the Taieri Gorge Railway with assistance of the Trust's volunteer members. These days Central Otago is really famous for the cycling tracks where the train tracks used to be in the Taieri Train tracks. The scenery is breath taking. I have included a few photo's of what we encountered on the way to Ranfurly.