Linden railway station is located on the
North Island Main Trunk Railway
The North Island Main Trunk (NIMT) is the main railway line in the North Island of New Zealand, connecting the capital city Wellington with the country's largest city, Auckland. The line is long, built to the New Zealand rail gauge of and ser ...
(NIMT) in
Linden,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
and is part of the suburban rail network of
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...
. It is
double tracked, has an
island platform
An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...
layout, and is 14.91
km from
Wellington railway station
Wellington railway station, or Wellington Central station, is the main railway station serving Wellington, New Zealand, and is the southern terminus of the North Island Main Trunk, Wairarapa Line and Johnsonville Line.
The station opened i ...
, the southern terminus of the NIMT.
Services
Linden is served by
Kapiti Line
Metlink's Kapiti Line is the electrified southern portion of the North Island Main Trunk railway between New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, and Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast, operated by Transdev Wellington on behalf of Greater Wellington R ...
commuter trains operated by
Transdev Wellington
Transdev Wellington is the operator of Wellington's Metlink rail network in New Zealand. The entity is a partnership of Transdev Australasia and Hyundai Rotem, who were awarded the contract to operate and maintain the commuter rail system in De ...
under the Metlink brand operating between
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...
and
Porirua or
Waikanae
Waikanae (, ) is a town on the Kapiti Coast, 60 kilometres north of the Wellington CBD. The name is a Māori word meaning "waters" (''wai'') "of the grey mullet".
The town lies between Paraparaumu, eight kilometres to the southwest, and Ōt ...
. Services are operated by
electric multiple units of the
FT/FP class (Matangi). Two
diesel-hauled carriage trains, the
Capital Connection
The Capital Connection is a long-distance commuter train operated by KiwiRail between Palmerston North and the capital city of Wellington on the North Island Main Trunk. In 2018 the service faced funding issues, but the Government ensured that ...
and the
Northern Explorer
The ''Northern Explorer'' is a long-distance passenger train operated by The Great Journeys of New Zealand division of KiwiRail between Auckland and Wellington in the North Island of New Zealand, along the North Island Main Trunk (NIMT). Thre ...
, pass through the station but do not stop.
Off-peak trains stop at all stations between Wellington and Waikanae. During peak periods, trains from Wellington that stop at all stations may terminate at Porirua or
Plimmerton and return to Wellington while a number of peak services run express between Wellington and Porirua and thus do not stop at Linden.
Travel times by train are seventeen minutes to Wellington, four minutes to Porirua, and forty-three minutes to Waikanae.
Trains run every twenty minutes during daytime off-peak hours, more frequently during peak periods, and less frequently at night.
Before July 2018, off-peak passenger train services between Wellington and Waikanae stopping at Linden ran every thirty minutes but were increased to one every twenty minutes from 15 July 2018.
History
The line through Linden was originally part of the
Wellington - Manawatu Line built by the
Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company
The Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company (WMR or W&MR) was a private railway company that built, owned and operated the Wellington-Manawatu railway line between Thorndon in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and Longburn, near Palmers ...
(WMR). The single track line opened on 24 September 1885 when services commenced on the first section of the line from Wellington to
Paremata
Paremata is a suburb of Porirua, on the Tasman Sea coast to the north of Wellington, New Zealand.
History
Early history
The modern suburb, just south of Plimmerton, derives its name from the "Paremata Barracks", erected on the north shore of P ...
with the full line to
Longburn
Longburn (or Karere) is a rural settlement just outside Palmerston North in the Manawatū-Whanganui area of New Zealand. Made up of large dairy processing plants Longburn is often mistaken to be a small township and not seen as a large satellite t ...
completed in 1886. Trains were operated by the WMR until December 1908, when the
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 ...
purchased the WMR and incorporated its line into the NIMT.
On 19 June 1937, the
Tawa Flat deviation to the south of Linden was opened to passenger services with double track from Tawa Flat to Wellington. It eliminated the circuitous single track route via
Johnsonville to Wellington. The line through Linden was
electrified
Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source.
The broad meaning of the term, such as in the history of technology, economic history ...
in June 1940 and double track from Tawa Flat to Porirua was completed on 15 December 1957.
Linden station opened with trains stopping there from 28 July 1940, after more than thirty years of requests to the
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) by developers, and by local residents wishing to avoid a walk of up to a mile from the Tawa Station. Apparently, those wishing to alight used to pull the emergency brake cord so that the train stopped in the vicinity of Collins Avenue; Don Carman recalls passengers debating as to whose turn it was to pull the cord. Deputations and letters to the minister in the 1930s were told that ''the time (for a station) was not yet ripe;'' though a petition in April 1939 got agreement after completion of electrification (in 1940), though delayed by the war. Originally conditional on not asking for a shelter, the Railways department was approached by
Arthur Carman
Arthur Herbert Carman (2 August 1902 – 28 November 1982) was a New Zealand sports journalist and writer, bookseller, publisher, pacifist, local politician, and local historian.
Life and career
Carman was born and died in Wellington, New Zeal ...
to agree to residents erecting a shelter. The department relented and erected a simple 6-metre by 3-metre wooden shelter, opened on 30 April 1941.
In 1954, a diversion of the meandering Porirua stream north of Linden station cut off a loop of the stream and eliminated two old wooden road bridges by taking the stream under a new bridge built at the intersection of Collins Avenue, Linden Avenue, Beachamp street, and Findlay Street. This allowed the Linden shopping centre to be developed on Collins Avenue on both the east and west sides of the railway.
In conjunction with the double-tracking of the line from Tawa Flat to Porirua in 1957, an island platform was constructed at Linden and a new larger shelter built from precast concrete panels replaced the original shelter. The original straight track through Linden became the northbound line and a new southbound line was constructed that curves around the station. Pedestrian access between the north and southbound tracks was provided from Collins Avenue at the north end and a steel and concrete overbridge with ramps was constructed at the south end to provide access to Rawson and Hinau Streets. A feature of the overbridge was the high wooden sides to shelter pedestrians from the strong winds which are prevalent above Linden Station.
With the double tracking, barrier arms were installed for vehicular traffic on Collins Avenue and pedestrian cribs or zig-zags were provided. However, because northbound trains stopping at Linden prolong the operation of the flashing lights, bells, and barrier arms, and following trains, or trains approaching from the opposite direction, can also keep the warning alarms operating for long periods, many pedestrians became habitual risk-takers. The very short pedestrian cribs were poorly designed forcing some pedestrians to walk with their backs to approaching trains before stepping onto the railway line. A series of pedestrian deaths at Collins Avenue followed. This led to the installation of second train coming indicators and, in the late 1980s, redesigned pedestrian cribs. The new cribs eliminated the high death rate by ensuring pedestrians faced oncoming trains and took sufficient steps to look up and see the trains before stepping onto the track.
In the late 1970s, the original incandescent platform lights that automatically lit when stopping trains approached were replaced with more efficient permanently lit mercury vapour lights.
From April to June 2014, the corroded steel overhead footbridge was refurbished and new lighting and signage provided. However, the original high sides of the bridge were replaced with lower sides leaving pedestrians exposed to the strong winds and driving rain. In early January 2019, the pedestrian overbridge was closed when structural engineers found it was below the required seismic rating and was earthquake-prone. The bridge remained closed for over a year while options were considered and remedial action taken. With many commuters living south of the station and most of the parking at the south end of the station, commuters were required to walk some 400 metres extra distance from their cars to the single remaining station entrance at Collins Avenue and back to the station to catch a train.
Tawa College students who commute from other stations were also required to walk the extra distance. The resulting extra pedestrian traffic, including the extra use of the Collins Avenue level crossing by students, increased the risk of another serious accident at this high-risk level crossing.
Initially, electric passenger services stopping at Linden were trains hauled by
ED and
EW class electric locomotives, and
DM/D and
EM/ET class electric multiple units.
ED locomotives hauled passenger trains from their introduction in 1940 but were rarely seen on passenger trains after the introduction of the
EW class locomotives in 1952. The last ED operated in 1981.
EW class locomotives introduced in 1952 pulled the majority of passenger trains from 1952 but became redundant with the introduction of
EM/ET class multiple units in the early 1980s. The last EW hauled passenger service through Linden was on 11 February 1983.
DM/D electric multiple units first ran on the line on 5 September 1949,
[Murray & Parsons (2008), p. 36] and the last of this class were withdrawn from service after the arrival of the
FT/FP class (Matangi)
multiple units
A multiple-unit train or simply multiple unit (MU) is a self-propelled train composed of one or more carriages joined together, which when coupled to another multiple unit can be controlled by a single driver, with multiple-unit train contro ...
in 2011. The
EM/ET class multiple units were introduced between 1982 and 1983 to replace locomotive-hauled trains and some of the
DM/D electric multiple units and last operated on 27 May 2016 after additional
FT/FP class (Matangi)
multiple units
A multiple-unit train or simply multiple unit (MU) is a self-propelled train composed of one or more carriages joined together, which when coupled to another multiple unit can be controlled by a single driver, with multiple-unit train contro ...
were introduced (instead of upgrading the EM/ET units).
References
*''Rails through the Valley: The story of the construction and use of the railway lines through Tawa'' by
Bruce Murray and David Parsons (2008, Tawa Historical Society)
*{{cite book , last= Murray , first= Bruce , title= A History of Tawa , accessdate= , edition= , year= 2014 , publisher= Tawa Historical Society , location= Wellington , isbn= 978-0-473-25848-1 , oclc= , page= , pages=
External links
Photos of Linden railway station
Railway stations in New Zealand
Rail transport in Wellington
Railway stations opened in 1940