History
This railway line was completed at the turn of the 20th century, and provided a link between Central Otago and Dunedin until closure in 1990. The first 64 km from the junction with the Main South Line in Wingatui remain operational; the initial 4 km form ONTRACK's Taieri Industrial Siding and the remaining 60 km through the Taieri Gorge to Middlemarch is operated by the Taieri Gorge Railway as a tourist attraction. The New Zealand Department of Conservation recognised that the remainder of the route to Clyde had potential as a recreational facility, and bought the formation after the rails and sleepers had been salvaged.
Since, the trail has come to be recognised as an important feature of the region, highlighted for example by strong interest from numerous groups in a 2011 workshop, where 120 people attended to discuss the further future of the trail, and how to encourage users to stay in the area for longer.
The success of the rail trail played an important role in ensuring the New Zealand Cycle Trail project succeeded in gaining funding, and was cited as an example of the kind of infrastructure the project is to provide by New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key.
Read more about this topic: Otago Central Rail Trail
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)