BYOP.
Out of respect to the residents of Railway Lane, a small cul-de-sac, I have not hidden a cache here. Instead this is a simple offset cache. Gather the information from Railway Lane, do the calculations, and you will find the cache at a nearby significant location.
One of my sources (Leitch and Scott) says that a trucking company now occupies the site of the old Outram station. Written almost twenty years ago this information is now out-of-date and has become misleading. The only trucking company yard in Outram today is NOT the site of the station. When the station site was sold it is correct that the transport company purchased part of it and used it to park trucks (a certain irony in that). However, in more recent time that land has been sold and private houses now stand on the site. The trucking company retreated to another site on the opposite side of the road. Leitch and Scott say that the goods shed remains on the site and is used by the transport company. Their book was published in 1995. However, Reid, in his 2006 article, says that the goods shed was moved in 1991 to the Taieri Historical Society’s park on the hill overlooking the township. A local Railway Lane resident is adamant that it was shifted later than ’91 and said it was possibly 1995, so Leitch and Scott may be correct. A little mystery there. (Update on 6/2/14- CO has just seen photos of the goods shed being moved and they are dated June 1997.)
The station site was where Railway Lane and neighbouring properties on Bell Street (including the current Outram Fire Station) now stand. Railway Lane is a small cul-de-sac. I would suggest parking outside it and walking through Railway Lane. The published co-ords for this cache are for the road entrance to Railway Lane and co-ords are given below for the point where a pathway from the lane meets Beaumaris Street. Why not walk the block?
No 8 Railway Lane is the actual stationmaster’s house built in 1891. It has been re-clad and re-roofed but the current owners assure me it is the original dwelling. NZR buildings were always well-built! No 7 Railway Lane stands on the site of the old goods shed. Another property in the lane carries the name “Railway House” but locals tell me this property was not part of the station buildings.
Records show that in 1884 the station had a staff of three. This eventually grew to include loco crews, guards, a cleaner, stationmaster, porter, surfaceman (a person who maintained the permanent way) and others. Outram based crews did a good deal of shunting on the Dunedin-Mosgiel line, including the Fernhill line into the hills behind Abbotsford, and into the quarry at Mosgiel (beneath where the large illuminated Mosgiel sign is attached to a cliff face today). There were the usual buildings including station building, a goods shed and a locomotive shed as well as the necessary water vat and coal bunker of the steam era. There were several shunting lines but no locomotive turning facility. Therefore locos had to move to the opposite end of the train on a loop and run back to Mosgiel “in reverse”. The Outram station served as the town’s post office until 1927.
Some bits of trivia: the line was “Open Section” which meant it had no signalling on it beyond Mosgiel Junction. There was a death on the line during its construction when a train carrying ballast (the large stones used to form the trackbed) derailed. The only other serious accident on the line was in 1942 when a shunter slipped under a train and had both legs severed. He survived and was transferred to a clerk’s position at Mosgiel station.
The line officially closed in 1953 but that doesn’t tell the full story. The line remained open as far as the Mosgiel Woollen Mill siding until 1968. There are also records of heavy equipment for the Waipori Gorge power stations being carried to Outram on special trains on the line in 1954 but it is not known how many times such trains ran and for how long this went on.
The line was only ever going to last as long as it took for roads and motor vehicles to improve. Passenger services were removed in 1950 and NZR Road Services buses took over that task. Staff were withdrawn from Outram in April 1952 and the line closed the following year. Reid says ”It was surprising it (the line) lasted as long as it did....Outram’s heyday was from 1900 to 1920 when, in addition to carrying the usual agricultural tonnage, it was carrying supplies for the Waipori power project and the extension of the Otago Central line. Like many obscure little railways the Outram branch is today readily forgotten, but it played a significant role in the formative years of the Taieri Plain and West Taieri in particular, and its history deserves to be recorded.” Amen to that and I hope this series of six caches has gone some way towards achieving that.
As mentioned, the published co-ords are for the road entrance to Railway Lane. In the Lane you will find that No 8, the old stationmaster’s house, has a name that is prominently displayed. Count the number of letters in the name (both words) and call that X. Do the calculations below. They will give you the location of the offset final cache which is close to the entrance to the Taieri Historical Park. Once you have found the cache I urge you to go into the park and check out the old Outram goods shed, relocated here in 1991 or ’95 depending on who you believe. Co-ords for the shed are given below. Sorry I couldn’t place the cache actually at the shed due to the proximity of an existing cache. The shed now houses an old threshing machine which can be seen through the windows.
GPS reception is patchy at the final so PLEASE use the hint. Container is a black bison tube, hanging a little off the ground.
S45 5A.BCC E170 1D.FEG
X= Number of letters in No 8 Railway Lane’s name
X-14=A
X-15=B
X-13=C
X-11=D
X-10=E
X-13=F
X-6=G
Sources:
Exploring New Zealand’s Ghost Railways, David Leitch & Brian Scott, 1995
“Rails to West Taieri”, New Zealand Railfan, September 2006 issue.