‘It is evident that there is little heed of
superstitions in the mind of the Railway Department,’ noted the Thames Star in
1929, ‘for it chose today, a Friday, to remove half the Thames Station building
from the Grahamstown end to its new site in Shortland.’
After twenty years of campaigning, the railway had
finally connected Thames to the rest of the Waikato in 1898. Thames built two train
stations: the small Thames South flag station in Shortland, handy to the
Shortland Wharf; and the grander, central Thames Station at Grahamstown - close
to Curtis Wharf, the main hotels and theatres, and central business district on
Albert and Queen streets.
Grahamstown’s fortunes changed over the next thirty
years, however. As the two townships moved closer to resembling the town we
know today, most of Thames’ shops and banks made the move to Pollen Street. Plans
were afoot to move key infrastructure like the post office to a more central
location. By this point only four people on average caught a train from Grahamstown’s
station each day, so having the bigger station building at the quiet end of
town no longer made sense for Thames. Instead of demolishing the two buildings,
it was decided to simply swap them around.
How do you move an entire railway station from one
side of Thames to the other? In two halves by rail, of course.
‘The “Puffing Billy,” as the hauling locomotive is
named, was clamped to the rails and started to shift the building from its
foundations on to two U wagons for transport up the line to its new home,’ explains
the Thames Star. ‘Gradually and steadily the engine did its work... whilst
around [the workers] with torrents of well-meant advice hovered all the small
boys and ex-bushmen as well as others who had gathered to watch the spectacle.’
The half-building was conveyed up the line and slid
onto the foundations of its new home without a single window being broken. The
workers’ next task was to carry the little Thames South flag building back down
the line to the Grahamstown site, before picking up the Grahamstown building’s second
half and reuniting it with the first half in Shortland.
Thames’ residents were happy to be able to keep the
grand Grahamstown building in town, even if it had to be sawn in half and
trundled up the line. Grahamstown’s new, small flag station was renamed Thames
North, while the Thames South station simply became the Thames station. ‘The
old Thames station at Grahamstown is today like Goldsmith’s Deserted Village,’
lamented the Thames Star. ‘Its name has passed from it... Ichabod - the glory
has departed.’
Thames’ railway line is now long gone. But maybe Grahamstown
has the last laugh – we may have had to replace our central station with a
smaller one, but now Grahamstown’s Small Gauge Railway is the only place in
town where you can catch a train. And a little bit of Grahamstown’s history
lives on – in one piece – at the Shortland end of the train line.
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