Warning: There is no need to go on the railway tracks at either stage of this cache. However to get to the final you will need to cross the railway tracks at the deignated crossing using the foot path. You still need to look for trains at the crossing. Please be careful with Cachelets.

Whitecliffs Branch Line from Darfield Junction

Stage 1: At the posted coordinates you will find the answers to get to the final. There are a number of railway items here including an information board, a small amount of railway track, a switch and the renovated Homebush Station amoung them. 

At this stage there is a railway wagon. there is a registration number on it starting with the letter M, A = the number of digits

The first digit = B

The number of buckets = C

The number position of the first letter of the work on these buckets = D 

At the final if you look towards Christchurch you will see the Darfield Station Platform and the Station building was demolished  many years ago.

.

Darfield Railway Station

Brief history of Darfield Railway Station

The second Darfield Railway Station  was closed in 1987 and demolished in 1989.

The Darfield railway station on the Midland Railway line has had a number of name changes. The station was first called Whitecliffs when the Midland Line went as far as Sheffield (or Malvern as it was then known) in December 1874. In August 1876 the name was changed to Horndon Junction, a name reflected in the plan for the town of Horndon drawn up in 1878. However in July 1879 the name was changed to Darfield to avoid confusion with Hornby Junction only five stops down the line. The name Darfield is attributed to Peter Jebson of Sheffield after a place near his English home.

An editorial in the Timaru Herald of Saturday May 7 1881 commented on the changes. "We hear that Mr Hall himself has been made to suffer some small modicum of the vexation that he has so largely inflicted upon others. The name of a railway station somewhere on the Whitecliffs branch had been changed at his instance to Horndon, the name of some village in England. Shortly afterwards, however, another Minister changed the name of Southbridge Junction to Hornby. Thus there were Hornby and Horndon within a few miles of one another, but on different lines, and the confusion that resulted to travelers was most serious. Of course this would not do, so the Minister of Public Works, (Hon Richard Oliver) in whose breast the name of Horndon aroused no dear old Home associations, quietly rubbed it out, and put some other one in, never dreaming, probably, that he was ruthlessly slaughtering one of the Premier's innocents."

John Hall of Hororata was Premier from October 1879 until April 1882. He was he was created K.C.M.G. in 1882 becoming Sir John Hall.

The final is located at

S 43° 29.ACA' E 172° 6.DCB'

The Whitecliffs Branch was a branch line railway that formed part of New Zealand's national rail network in the Canterbury region of the South Island. It was more industrial than the many rural branches on the South Island's east coast whose traffic primarily derived from agriculture, and it operated from 1875 until 1962.

What would have been the first portion of a branch line to Whitecliffs has now become part of the Midland Line. The original plan was for a straight line running directly from Rolleston to Sheffield and Springfield, with a branch built from Kirwee to Darfield. When the railway reached Kirwee, the line to Darfield was built first, and it was from here that construction of two lines began. One line was built towards Sheffield and Springfield, and one towards Whitecliffs. At that stage, it was not known which, if either, would be incorporated in the line to the West Coast.

Surveys for the line from Darfield to Whitecliffs were undertaken in 1872, and with contracts let the next year, work was well under way by 1874.^[1] The line was opened all the way to Whitecliffs on 3 November 1875. Stations were established in (from junction to terminus): Hawkins, Homebush, Coalgate, Glentunnel, South Malvern, and Whitecliffs, with goods sheds located at three of these stations. Trains on the line had to deal with steep ascents between Hawkins and Homebush and on the run up to Whitecliffs.

Three proposals existed in the 19th century regarding the extension of the line. An early proposal suggested that the Whitecliffs Branch should be extended from Whitecliffs to the West Coast via the Wilberforce River and Browning's Pass. Another proposal called for a line departing the branch at Homebush and running via Lake Lyndon up to Cass, from where it would have followed roughly the same route as the present-day line via Arthur's Pass. A third proposal received the support of an 1880 Royal Commission on New Zealand's railways, calling for an extension of the branch into the Rakaia Gorge and to the coalfields near the Acheron River. None of these proposals ever came to fruition. Another significant proposal, the Canterbury Interior Main Line, would have had its junction with the Whitecliffs Branch in Homebush.

Stations

The following stations were located on the Whitecliffs Branch, in order from the junction at Darfield to the terminus:

• Hawkins
• Homebush
• Coalgate
• Glentunnel
• South Malvern
• Whitecliffs