Ferrymead locomotive W192

[Editor: A train ride on a Sunday is a famous Heathcote Valley institution over at Ferrymead Heritage Park. Steam locomotive W192 is often the attraction. Nigel Hogg of the Canterbury Railway Society tells us all about her.]

Ferrymead Heritage Park's steam locomotive W192 was built in 1889 by the New Zealand Government Railways (NZR) in their Addington Workshops, here in Christchurch. It was the first locomotive to be built in the NZR's own workshops.

There were only two "W" class locomotives built (the design being modified for the later "Wa" class), and is loosely thought to be a side tank version of the earlier J class tender locomotives making them more suitable for heavily graded sections of track.

The first two decades of W192's life were spent working between Upper Hutt and Summit at the south end of the infamous Rimutaka Incline (replaced in 1955 by today's Rimutaka Tunnel) on the line from Wellington through to the Wairarapa.

In the early 20th century W192 was transferred back to the South Island to the West Coast. It spent the rest of its working life based at Greymouth, working coal trains between the coal mines at the top of the Rewanui and Roa Inclines in the Paparoa Ranges northeast of Greymouth to the river port at Greymouth.

Then in 1959 W192 was withdrawn from service, being replaced by other larger tank engines displaced from other areas of the country that had been dieselised. Unlike most other locomotives of the time which were either scrapped or dumped in rivers to protect railway embankments from erosion, W192 was held on to, and then tidied up as a static exhibit for the 1963 centenary of NZR in Christchurch.

Following the centenary, W192 was stored in Arthurs Pass for a few years, then later at Addington Workshops. The staff at the workshops patched the locomotive together to be steamed for the workshops' centenary in the late 1970's. A much more comprehensive overhaul was done at Addington in the mid 1980's (partly as an apprentice training scheme) to restore the locomotive for the 125th anniversary of NZR in 1988.

From this time the locomotive was maintained by current and former NZR staff, mostly at Linwood locomotive depot in Christchurch following the closure of Addington Workshops and run on occasional trips.

Prior to privatisation of NZR in 1993, the locomotive was donated to the Rail Heritage Trust of NZ. With the later outsourcing of engineering services, W192 was displaced from the Linwood depot and in 2002 W192 was loaned by the Rail Heritage Trust to the Canterbury Railway Society (CRS) at Ferrymead. It is now on long term loan to the CRS and is a regular sight running trains on the Ferrymead Railway.