Sunday 18 June 2017

Otago Central Railway [31A]: Alexandra Maps

So this post is the actual maps, and it will be updated as necessary. I can't show all the photos I used as source because I can't find all the people to ask their permission, but it's possible I might publish some pieces of their photos rather than the whole photo. For now I have attached a number of my own photos which I haven't put on any other post.

Anyhow in each case we have the aerial photography version and plain version of each map. I haven't bothered with an overview map this time around.


 So we start from the east end of Alexandra. The two Ds are the Way & Works depot buildings. The bigger one is the main depot and the smaller one is the trolley shed. We also have a railway house which is still there, next to the works depot.

More into the centre the two Gs are goods loading facilities. The smaller one is the goods shed, and to save time, I just copied the one from Clyde without any idea if it is the same size or not, as I don't have any measurements of it. The difference here is that the goods unloading was done under a veranda rather than inside the shed so the actual footprint would include this veranda.

The larger G is the loading shelter that was built for the fruit traffic. By the time the yard closed this traffic was well gone and the shelter was where station staff parked their TR locomotive, as shown in one of my photos.

The S is the station building and again to save time I simply copied the Clyde station, which like Alexandra had a veranda covering most of the platform.

L is the loading bank next to the goods shed. Out of all these facilities there is just one house and the passenger platform still there today. The rail trail has a carpark next to the works depot site. There is a concrete pad which I assume was at the back of the trolley shed.

 Continuing further west we have in addition to the facilities already discussed the following:
A = toilet block at the end of the platform. We can see where two more houses (H) were formerly located. We can also see the stockyards (Y) and where the Apple and Pear Marketing Board had its site, which took over part of the stockyards site at a later date and put a shelter there. I think they took over and fenced off an area of land next to the level crossing as well as the photos I have show.

The tracks coming down from the loading shelter sort of end in mid-air because I don't have any photos of this end of the yard. It's extremely unlikely there was a diamond crossing of the Apple and Pear siding (if that is what was served by it) - either that siding was removed by the time the shelter came along, or the sidings joined together.

Coming up the west end of the yard we can see one house which still exists and the oil company siding which came off the main and crossed over Chicago St. I suspect in later years this may be where the Fulton Hogan or Alexandra Transport yard was located. There is in fact a transport company located in that yard today.

We can see there was another oil company depot further west. The siding then went back into the main and that was the end of Alexandra.

See the numerically later posts in the Alexandra series for some depictions of what the oil company sites look like today and the remaining buildings from those sites.

Here now are a number of my own photos of Alexandra.

 Coming into Alexandra from the east end, we can see crossing alarms fitted at SH8 and the main to loop points. The slow 10 restriction basically was applied to all trains because of the proximity of the combined bridge which had this speed limit on it for traffic safety.

 The loading shelter with the TR locomotive parked under it. From all the photos there was clearly very little freight traffic by this stage.
 Our train stopping at the station.
 At the west end of the yard. Over to the right is the APB building / yard. Of interest on the left in the distance is the pitched roof of the loading shelter in the transport yard, which we can see on Google is still there today. Maybe that was where Fulton Hogans had their siding.


 Trolley shed. It looks like the tracks weren't cast into the building floor and therefore, that is why the tracks aren't obvious today.