Along the Hutt Valley railway line in 1966/1967

Trains along the Hutt Valley railway line, Woburn to Wellington, in 1966/1967.

Locations include Woburn, the Ava railway bridge, Horokiwi, Ngauranga and Thorndon. The Hutt/Wellington motorway was under construction. Locomotive classes include Ed, Ew, Di, Da, De, also English Electric units and Fiat 88-seat articulated railcars. Peak hour commuter trains commonly had up to 14 or 15 carriages in those days - longer than station platforms so some passengers had to climb up/down steps to/from the ballast. Commuters often stood on the open platforms at the ends of each carriage.

Filmed by Robbie McGavin, who was a young teenager at the time, with a no-sound, 8mm film camera.

Robbie says the camera "was a 'Holiday Metermatic' camera with three different lenses on a rotating turret and about 20-secs filming per 'take' with a clockwork drive. Cost £19/19/6 at James Smiths from memory, in early 1966. I think it was 2 weeks work for me in May school holidays at £7 approx per week, thus the shortfall and lots of lawns mowed and my first two films were 50' reels of Kodachrome II which cost a lot too... didn't have a projector so made a magnifying glass in a Meccano frame and just looked at each frame individually and spliced bits together from there. About two months later I bought a manual reel-to-reel editor with a little screen and used that, it was about £3 I think."

Film scanning and colour restoration by Digital Film Transfer in Lower Hutt - http://www.filmtransfer.co.nz/ . Further stabilisation and editing by me.

Royalty free relaxing background piano music by Gabriele Tosi, http://www.soundtracks-music.com/ (Creative Commons Attribution licence - reuse allowed)