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as the ‘Rakaia and Ashburton Forks Railway Company’ were businessmen as much as farmers—George Gould, E. S. Coster, George Hart and D. Gordon Holmes being the local representatives. The landowners of the district to be served agreed at a poll to rating by the County Council to meet the company’s deficits. The first plans provided for a railway with two branches from a junction some eleven miles from Rakaia. One line was to terminate at ‘Methven Post Office’ and the other, of sixteen miles, at Gough’s crossing in the upper Ashburton Forks region. However, the directors decided against the latter. By doing so they gave the company a far better chance of paying its way. They also provided the farmers with an excuse for refusing to pay rates.

In November 1878, the ceremonial opening of work on the track provided Rakaia with its first gala day. (There had been more important occasions in the history of the township but few people to celebrate.) Bunting flew from every house and place of business. Headed by the Ashburton brass band, the school children marched in procession, a hundred strong, with banners and evergreens and flowers. They then lined the railway platform and greeted the officials who arrived in a special train from Christchurch. George Hart of Winchmore, the chairman, ‘turned the first sod’. A banquet followed.

John and Andrew Anderson, the Christchurch engineers, secured the contract for £56.000. (The total cost was £74,000.) They laid the 224 miles of track in steel rails, almost the first to be used in New Zealand. They also supplied two American light tank engines, three passenger carriages—among the first bogey vehicles in this country—a baggage van, fifty waggons and all station buildings. With no more ceremony than an inspection by the General Manager of Railways, other officials and Hart and Anderson, the line was handed over to the Railways Department to manage, and opened on 26 February 1880.

At first the train ran twice each way daily. The company made a profit and received a liberal subsidy from the government but not sufficient to enable it to pay the seven per cent interest guaranteed to the shareholders. Nor did it obtain the promised rates through the County Council. That body met a deputation of those who declared that the change of route after they had given their consent resulted in their deriving no benefit. It therefore decided not to levy a rate to meet the first account, for £2611, sent by the