A railway to West Taieri was first proposed around 1870 and initially it seemed that it would simply leave the main line at Allanton (then known as Greytown) and run in a straight line to Outram. An alternative route (referred to as the North Taieri route) leaving the main line at Mosgiel was also floated. This had the disadvantage of being twice as long as the Allanton route (and therefore more expensive to construct) but had the advantage of providing easy access to the important Mosgiel woollen mill and offers of free land to run the route across. This generosity by the landowners carried the condition that trains would run six days a week on the finished line. There was considerable controversy over which route to choose (and even whether a line could be justified at all) but eventually the North Taieri option won out. Four contracts for earthworks, bridges and culverts, the bridge over the Taieri River and construction of the permanent way were awarded to Messrs Henderson and Co. at a combined cost of 31 625 pounds. Work began in September 1875 and the line was opened in October 1877.
Interestingly, the double-Fairlie locomotive Josephine (on display at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum) is known to have been present at the opening of the line and worked on it until being sent north in 1883.
The Outram line left the main line via a left-hand curve between the current Wingatui and Mosgiel stations. That curve was in the vicinity of the observation waypoint on Gladstone Road North noted below. I have not hidden a cache here due to the proximity of the main trunk railway line. Absolutely nothing now remains as a clue to the exact line of the curve. Houses now cover the area and there must have been substantial earthworks associated with the housing development, obliterating any trace of the line.
The cache is on Dukes Road at the site of the Dukes Road station, the first station on the line after leaving Mosgiel. You can see a length of railway iron in the open drain beside the cache. Look south-east from the cache, back towards Mosgiel, and running along beside the HV power lines you can clearly see the raised roadbed of the railway in the paddock.
If you are interested, co-ords are provided below for two further observation-only waypoints. The first is on Factory Road outside the Mill Park storage facility. This is the old Mosgiel woollen mill. A siding ran off of the Outram line into the mill. The second is on the bank of the Silver Stream in the car-park of Peter Johnstone Park. A bridge carried the line across the Silver Stream right here. Earthworks to construct floodbanks probably destroyed any remains of the bridge abutments. Look across the stream to the north-west and you will see HV power lines running along beside the old railway roadbed. I couldn’t place a cache here due to the proximity to an existing cache.
Incidentally, if you are interested, use Google Earth to take a satellite view of the area and you can clearly make out the line of the old railway through the paddocks, across the Silver Stream and right down to the main trunk line. In several places the old rail roadbed is now in use as walkways. You can clearly see that adjacent to The Taieri High School (now Taieri College), along whose boundary the line ran, the siding to the Mosgiel woollen mill curved away around the edge of what is now the college sportsground. You can see how dead-end streets Dryden St and Morrison St only ran as far as the railway line. Well worth a look.
Sources:
Exploring New Zealand’s Ghost Railways, David Leitch & Brian Scott, 1995
“Rails to West Taieri”, New Zealand Railfan, September 2006 issue.