Addington Railway Workshops water tower plaque

The Addington Railway Workshops was a major railway

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...

s established in the

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

suburb of Addington in 1877 by the

Public Works Department This list indicates government departments in various countries dedicated to public works or infrastructure. See also * Public works * Ministry or Board of Public Works, the imperial Chinese ministry overseeing public projects from the Tang ...

, and transferred in 1880 to the newly-formed

New Zealand Railways Department The New Zealand Railways Department, NZR or NZGR (New Zealand Government Railways) and often known as the "Railways", was a government department charged with owning and maintaining New Zealand's railway infrastructure and operating the railway ...

(NZR). The workshops closed in 1990.

History

Addington Railway Workshops were opened in 1877 to overhaul and construct railway equipment, and to assemble locomotives being imported from England. In 1889, the workshops were responsible for building the first locomotive to be built by NZR, W 192, and continued to build locomotives up to the early 1920s. As well as railway work, Addington also undertook contract work such as the manufacture of gold dredge components; during the First World War, the workshops produced military equipment including aeroplane components. During the 1920s, Addington was re-geared to manufacture and overhaul rolling stock, although it continued to carry out limited overhauls on steam locomotives and the E^C and E^O class electric locomotives. Limited locomotive construction resumed in 1962 with the construction of the D^SC class centre-cab shunting locomotives. Addington also assembled the Mitsubishi D^SA and D^SB class diesel-hydraulic shunting locomotives in 1967-68 and four of the five Toshiba DSJ class centre-cab shunters in 1984. Due to the rationalisation of the

New Zealand Railways Corporation New Zealand Railways Corporation (NZRC) is the state-owned enterprise that owns the land beneath KiwiRail's Rail transport in New Zealand, railway network on behalf of the Crown. The Corporation has existed under a number of guises since 1982, wh ...

following deregulation in 1981, Addington Workshops closed on 14 December 1990. The site was cleared with the exception of the former water down; due to changes in freight handling the Main North Line was realigned across the former works entrance, while a new Christchurch Railway Station was opened on this site along the realigned stretch of track on 5 April 1993, replacing the former Christchurch railway station on Moorhouse Avenue in central Christchurch. The remainder of the site was sold to

Ngāi Tahu Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori (tribe) of the South Island. Its (tribal area) is the largest in New Zealand, and extends from the White Bluffs / Te Parinui o Whiti (southeast of Blenheim), Mount Mahanga and Kahurangi Poi ...

for redevelopment as a shopping centre, named Tower Junction after the former workshops water tower. The

Addington Water Tower Addington may refer to: Places In Australia: * Addington, Victoria In Canada: * Addington, Ontario * Addington County, Ontario (now Lennox and Addington County, Ontario) * Addington Highlands, Ontario * Addington Parish, New Brunswick * Addi ...

is registered with

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust) ( mi, Pouhere Taonga) is a Crown entity with a membership of around 20,000 people that advocate ...

as a Category I heritage building, registration number 5390.

Locomotive classes built at Addington

* A (8) * A^B (38) * B (6) * B^A (10) * D^SC * DSJ * E^D (2) * F^A * U * W (2) * W^A * W^AB (2) * W^F (10) * X (18)

References

*''Addington Railway Workshops: Working with Wood'' by Keith G. Brown (2009,

New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society The New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society Inc is a society of railway enthusiasts, based in Wellington. It was incorporated in 1958. The society archives are in the ''Thomas McGavin Building'' on Ava railway station's former goods yard in t ...

, (Brown was a tradesman carpenter there from 1949 to 1987)

External links

Railways of New Zealand - Addington

A new engine (1906) at the Addington Workshops

{{coord, -43.5395, 172.6077, display=title, format=dms Defunct railway workshops Railway workshops in New Zealand Buildings and structures in Christchurch Rail transport in Christchurch NZHPT Category I listings in Canterbury, New Zealand