Ngakawau Branch

The Seddonville Branch, later truncated as the Ngakawau Branch, is a branch line railway in the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island. Construction began in 1874 and it reached its terminus at the Mokihinui Mine just beyond Seddonville in 1895. In 1981 it was closed past Ngakawau and effectively became an extension of the Stillwater–Westport Line, since formalised as the Stillwater Ngakawau Line.

The branch was built for transporting coal from mines to the harbour at Westport. Unlike most other railways of the era, there was no expectation that it would open up country for settlement and farming, as the terrain was mountainous and not suited to settlement of significant size.

Coalfield surveys had identified significant deposits of bituminous coal on the Mount Rochfort and Stockton plateaus high above the coastal plain and outcrops of sub-bituminous coal had been located at low level close to the rivers at Waimangaroa and Ngakawau. However, none of this coal could be accessed because of a lack of transport along the plain to the Buller River at Westport, which was large enough for ships to access.

Surveying of the line began on 3 March 1874 and construction began on 13 July 1874. The first section opened to Fairdown on 31 December 1875. Waimangaroa was reached on 5 August 1876 and regular services began operating. The section to Ngakawau opened for traffic on 26 September 1877, bringing the length to 30 kilometres (18.6 miles). By mid-1878 only one mine, that of the Wellington Coal Company on the north bank of the Waimangaroa River, had opened, and the amount of traffic between Waimangaroa Junction and Ngakawau was so low that that section of the line was mothballed until 1883. It then reopened to allow stone for harbour works at Westport to be transported.

The impact of the Long Depression limited government funds available for railway construction, and no extension of the line occurred for over a decade. By the end of the 1880s, the economic position was improving and work commenced on extending the line to Seddonville. On 8 August 1893 it opened to Mokihinui, and on 23 February 1895 the New Zealand Railways Department acquired a 6.2 kilometre (3.8 mile) private line from Mokihinui through Seddonville to the Mokihinui Mine, run by the Mokihinui Coal Company. Some of the funds for the construction of the Ngakawau-Mokihinui section and the purchase of the Mokihinui line were provided by the Westport Harbour Board.

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