Railway Enthusiasts visit the Remuera Railway Station
Remuera Railway Station with rains. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
Remuera Heritage welcomed the Railway Enthusiasts’ Society to the Remuera Railway Station during the Auckland Heritage Festival.
The Society invited its rail enthusiasts to hop on board a train from the Waitemata (Britomart) station to Onehunga, stopping off at Remuera railway station for a 30-minute visit to hear about the history of the station. 60+ people hopped off the train and crammed into the luggage room of the station building to hear from Sue Cooper and Rebecca Washer of Remuera Heritage. Unfortunately, the state of the interior of the station building was very dirty and dangerous. The northern end of the building could not be accessed, and the signal box is under wraps and couldn’t be seen. However, there was considerable interest in this remarkable station, which is one of only two surviving island stations with a signal box in New Zealand. Below is a short history of the Remuera Railway Station.
Railway Entusiasts inside the building.
Railway Enthusuasts inside the station. Remuera Heritage copyright.
Sue Cooper talking with the railway enthusiasts. Remuera Heritage copyright.
Railway Enthusiasts at Remuera Railway Station. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
Interior of the station building with broken glass on the floor. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
Remuera railway station platform. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
Remuera Signal Box under wraps. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
New sign at Remuera railway station about its history. Copyright Remuera Heritage.
Tyer tablets. Copyright Remuera Heritage
Alan Verry of the Railways Enthusiasts Soc and Sue Cooper, Remuera Heritage.
Remuera Station began as a stop on the Auckland-Onehunga railway, opened in 1873. After the turn of the century, the growth of traffic on the line was stretching its capacity. By 1903, Minister of Railways Sir Joseph Ward acknowledged the need for better capacity and accommodation on the line. A duplicate line was built to Penrose junction, later extended all the way to Hamilton, and new island stations were erected at Newmarket, Greenlane, Remuera, Penrose and Ellerslie. The present Remuera Station was completed in November 1907 for £1,149. It replaced an earlier building that became a library for workshop staff. The railway line ran through the James Dilworth Estate, which is why the Dilworth Junior and Senior campuses were separated by the railway line and then the motorway in the 1960s.
A toilet block was added shortly after for £80.00. This was demolished in 1982. A steady drop in parcel and passenger freight to and from the station saw its closure as an officered station in 1942. Remuera was by then well served by trams. Remuera Station enjoyed its busiest period as a freight station from 1970 when the forwarding company Alltrans established a large depot, which closed in the late 1980s. In 1979 the station was closed to all traffic except passengers and private siding traffic (principally Alltrans). The station platform now remains open for passengers but has been unstaffed for 50 years. A modified platform beyond the southern end of the building is used by commuter trains.
Historical Significance
Remuera Station is one of the 2 oldest remaining island stations in New Zealand. The other one is at Wingatui near Dunedin. The Rail Heritage Trust of New Zealand was recently given extra government funding by Winston Peters to repair Wingatui and Mataura stations.
Architecture
The Remuera Station building was designed by railways architect George Troup who designed the Dunedin railway station. It is essentially a gabled rectangular structure with verandas on both track elevations. The building is timber-framed and clad with rusticated weatherboards. The roof is Marseille tiles with distinctive cresting and two brick chimneys and pots. There were decorative cast-iron finials at either end until recently. The verandas have, by contrast, corrugated iron roofs supported by decorative cast-iron brackets. Each track elevation has a symmetrical arrangement of doors and windows (double hung sash, presently boarded up) and each gable end has three small four-pane windows.
By the 1990s, the railway station had fallen into a bad state of disrepair with broken windows, rust and water leaks, peeling paint and was covered in graffiti.
The Remuera Railway Station Preservation Trust was formed in 1994 and commissioned a conservation report from Dave Pearson, heritage architect. The Trust repaired the exterior and leased the interior to a photographer.
When the railway lines were electrified in 2011, the platform was lowered, which damaged the signal box and the railway station building, including leaving the toilet as an open sewer pipe.
Remuera Heritage has been trying to restore the interior, without success. We don’t have a lease or a licence to occupy. AT & KiwiRail are not interested because they don’t use the interior.
We commissioned Burgess + Treep to update the conservation plan and tried to get funding about 10 years ago.
Various reports have been commissioned by AT from Beca Carter, but they have not been shared. Recently, some remedial work has been carried out, but only on the exterior.
KiwiRail own the building and leases it to AT.
The RRS is listed on the Auckland Council’s Historic Heritage List as Category A, Heritage New Zealand’s Heritage List as Category 1 and is on the Register of the Rail Heritage Trust of New Zealand. https://railheritage.org.nz/buildings/remuera-station-inc-signal-box/
In September 2024, vandals were caught throwing rocks at the windows. A glazier was able to source heritage glass, but the broken glass in the interior has just been left on the floor, along with other debris.
Tyer Tablets
Remuera station has two Tyer tablet machines. Prompted by terrible train accidents in England on single track lines, Edward Tyer developed the tablet system in which a token is given to the train driver – this must then be slotted into an electric interlocking device at the other end of the single-track section before another train is allowed to pass. He developed these in the 1850s. They were used in NZ until June 1994 on the Wellington to Masterton line.
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