Caution: This cache is on the side of a road where traffic passes at speed and there is no footpath or a shoulder wide enough to safely park. I suggest you park at the Gordon Road intersection and walk back to the cache. Beware the open drain which must be stepped across to access the cache.
After leaving Mosgiel Junction and passing the Dukes Road station the line continued to run dead straight until entering a left-hand curve in the vicinity of this cache and then heading south-west. The North Taieri station was just beyond the curve.
Directly on the opposite side of the road from the cache you will see a typical curved rail gate post marking where an entrance into the station yard must have been. From the cache walk a few metres north-east and about 50 metres into the paddock beyond the alpaca sign you will see a concrete culvert nestled amongst trees. It is used as a farm bridge now but is one of the original culverts on the line. In the creek below the culvert there are numerous railway “bits and pieces” including railway iron and what appears to be a flanged wheel from a jigger. When the line was closed and the station site cleared the contractors must have simply pushed much of the material into the creek. When researching this cache the landowner kindly allowed me access but it is private property so please just observe from the roadside. The current landowner told me that when he purchased the farm he did not know about the railway and wondered why ploughing of a paddock turned up huge amounts of old railway ballast! The mound of earth in the paddock looks very like a railway loading bank but is not- the current owner placed it there.
Interestingly, in the late 1880s a horse-drawn tram left the Outram line at North Taieri station to carry construction materials up the hill to Salisbury for use in constructing the Otago Central railway, still in use today as the privately-owned Taieri Gorge line.
As with the first cache in the series a look at a satellite view of the cache site on Google Earth shows clearly the curve of the rail roadbed through the farm.
As you head south-west on School Road towards the next cache in the series you pass a flat grassed area beside the road just beyond the Gordon Road intersection. This was part of the North Taieri station yard. It is possible in places to make out the roadbed of the railway just over the roadside farm fences on your left as you travel along School Road. The line ran parallel to the current road right along to SH87 and the next cache.
Sources:
Exploring New Zealand’s Ghost Railways, David Leitch & Brian Scott, 1995
“Rails to West Taieri”, New Zealand Railfan, September 2006 issue.