Restoration of railway goods shed

• Published date: 26 January 2023
• Publication title: North Canterbury News

Contractors were recently on site of the big red goods shed sitting beside Oxford Road at Springbank, fixing the walls and eaves, roofing and doors undertaking repair work on the structure, aiming to make it both bird and water proof

Builder Mike Benson said his team worked to tidy the building up as there was quite a bit of woodwork restoration needed.

The old goods sheds role in the development of the region’s transport history is almost forgotten now, but Springbank couple Sonya and Phil Smith want to preserve the historic, former railway shed and nearby sidings sitting on their property.

‘‘We want to make it usable for school visits to discover its history, we are quite excited the first stage has been started and it will be good to get it all done,’’ Mrs Smith said.

She says they received a grant from ‘‘The Heritage, Biodiversity and Ecological Fund’’ through the Waimakariri District Council.

‘‘Its purpose is to go towards rail door repairs and painting of the exterior.

‘‘We are extremely grateful for the grant as we found the building was in a worse state than we thought and further repairs are required before the shed will be ready for painting and for it to be accessible by the public.’’

Historian Bernard Kingsbury detailed in his book The Rangiora – Oxford Railway Line By B S Kingsbury, March 2005, about the shed originally being built in 1874 as part of the development of the Oxford Branch line needed to move logs from Oxford which at that time had one of the biggest stands of millable timber in Canterbury in the 1860s.

Work on the Oxford Branch, a...