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The Bay Of Island Vintage Railway (BOIVR) operated the historic rail link between Kawakawa and Opua till January 2000. Due to circumstances at the time the railway closed down and lay dormant until 2006. A new Trust was formed and Mike Bradshaw on his return from Argentina was persuaded to join the railway and get it back on track. As trains had not been running for six years so there was a large amount of work to be done to get trains running again. Two coaches and ‘Fredrick the Diesel Engine’ were the first to be refurbished and painted.
As every bridge had to be re-surveyed it meant that initially we only ran trains through Kawakawa to the first bridge out of town. As each bridge has been signed off and the track been brought up to running standard we now over bridge eight. There are fourteen bridges and one tunnel on the fourteen kilometers of track to Opua – so lots of work still required to achieve our goal of returning to Opua.
Now that we have reached Taumarere our next major goal is get over the ‘long bridge’ and on to Opua.
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