THE majority of the 79km freight line between Invercargill and Ohai on New Zealand’s South Island will be mothballed following the announcement of the planned closure of the Takitimu mine near Nightcaps.
The mine, in the Southland region of the island, has been exhausted and coal transport will cease in the second half of next year. State operator KiwiRail says there is no other freight traffic on the line, and with the removal of existing coal stocks taking place by road, trains will no longer be permitted to run for the 70km between Ohai and Lorneville.
“The Ohai Line is in a poor state and most of it is already closed to trains,” says KiwiRail chief infrastructure officer, Siva Sivapakkiam. “Significant damage to track and other infrastructure occurred in an extreme weather event in September 2023. Since then, coal from the Takitimu mine has been transported by road to Invercargill, where it is put on trains and travels 450km north to near Timaru.”
According to KiwiRail, the Ohai line requires more than $NZ 1m ($US 590,000) of repair work to reopen it and would then need tens of millions of dollars more spent on upgrades, including replacing a number of ageing wooden bridges with modern structures, over the next five years.
“Given the mine is closing this spending cannot be justified,” Sivapakkiam says. “KiwiRail always supports the use of rail where it makes sense. The first 9km of the Ohai Line, from Invercargill to Lorneville, which serves the Alliance Group’s meat works at Lorneville, is not impacted and remains fully operational.”
KiwiRail will carry out periodic inspections in rail vehicles between Lorneville and Ohai, as well as low-level maintenance, to ensure the rail corridor remains safe and to limit overall deterioration in case new freight opportunities emerge.
