This building perhaps embodies Dunedin's wealthy inheritance. During the city's most prosperous years this railway station was the country's busiest, handling up to 100 trains each day. The station is New Zealand’s most photographed building.
Construction began in 1903 and the station was officially opened in 1906. Dunedin's fourth railway station, it was designed in the fashionable, desirable and highly expensive Edwardian Baroque style. Unusually though, architect George Troup uses an experimental collaboration of Classical and Neo-Gothic imagery, which creates a grand and classically regimented structure, with an assorted and asymmetric countenance. Troup displays such an unrestrained freedom of expression most prominently in the Italianate clock tower at one end and the Gothic spire at the other, as well as the use of Classical motifs to create upwards gestures reminiscent of Gothic architecture.
The combination of over the top decoration and the intricate use of contrasting dark basalt and white Oamaru limestone earned its architect the nick-name "Gingerbread George". The exceptional attention to detail is not limited to its exterior. The foyer and booking hall's elaborate ornamentation is bathed in a soft golden light that reinforces the wealth of the city of Dunedin at the time. The booking hall alone features a mosaic floor of almost 750,000 tiles of Royal Doulton porcelain. Plenty of parking around here, you can get the award winning Taieri Gorge Railway train from here or travel along the coast, there is a farmer's market on a Saturday here and a great local museum Toitu next door.
Logging requirements:
1. Take a photo of you(face not essential) with part of the railway station in and add to your log.
2. Send me an email answering the following - At the main entrance to the railway station there is a small brass plaque on the floor dedicated to a well known local writer - what did they come to Dunedin Railway Station to do in 1945. Feel free to log the cache when you have sent the email, you will only receive a reply from me if I require further information.
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.