Monday 27 March 2017

Otago Central Railway [13]: Locating the new Clyde station

One thing I don't have at the moment is a source document showing exactly where Clyde was moved to in 1980. We know where the railway yard was, but not where the location of 214.38 km was exactly, which is the kilometrage shown in various sources for the new station, because there isn't a new chainage chart for Clyde. (I don't know what was used after the lines were metricated to replace the old chainage charts)

However we can convert the mileage to the metric equivalent by using, for example, the bridge list and converting this distance. The last bridge just before Clyde is the Muttontown Gully Viaduct (No.86) and from D&E, we know that the east abutment is at the metric location of 213.31 km. So I can do my measurements from that location which on the chainage chart is 132 miles 48 chains 5 links.

Basically using that and knowing also the fact that there was only a very small difference between the imperial and metric distances at this location, I came up with the 214.38 distance being the entrance to Clyde yard, rather than being where we would expect it to be, which might be alongside the goods shed or something. In other words that is where 1070 metres from the east abutment of Bridge 86 is.

Another way to reach this measurement is to go from the end of rails at 214.95 km and measure backwards. So by these measurements we get only an approximate location, that one shown below, as the measurements don't quite match up.