I went through Avondale and New Lynn today, so decided to take just a few photos showing progress on the upgrades to the train stations in both these suburbs. I think most of the current focus is on getting the areas around Newmarket and Grafton sorted out, as there weren’t  a huge number of workers around, but it is clear that progress is being made on these upgrades during the rail shutdown period.

This photo is taken at Avondale looking west towards the St Jude’s Street level crossing. In the foreground is where the future Avondale station is being constructed. I think this station will open around the middle of the year, and will provide excellent access to and from the Avondale town centre.

This photo is from the same spot but looking the other way. It looks like the large, oddly shaped, pieces of concrete are what make up the base of the rail platforms. Judging by the fact that they’re lying all over the tracks, I assume these will be put in place over the next short while. Which means that by the time the Western Line is operational again (January 18th) the platforms for Avondale station should be largely completed.

This photo looks west once again, and shows exactly where the limit of double-tracking is now located. I wonder if Ontrack will take the opportunity of this rail shutdown to extend that limit further west, and minimise the length of single-track that remains between Avondale and New Lynn. I know that a lot of double-track has been constructed on the other side of St Jude Street, but it just hasn’t been hooked up yet.

Now at New Lynn, this photo looks west from where pedestrians cross at the rather bizarre Clark Street/Rankin Ave/Totara Ave intersection. As you can see the trench is now pretty much completed, and this photo shows what a particularly large job that was. All that seems necessary now is to lay the track, and to build the future New Lynn train station.

This photo looks the other way, towards where the future New Lynn train station will be located. I think that the big concrete slab over the trench is part of the future train station. It will certainly be fun watching this station be constructed over the next few months. Opening is in the middle of the year I think.

Things are certainly progressing quite well. Hopefully in the next couple of days I’ll have the opportunity to visit the Newmarket/Grafton area and take a few pics of what’s going on there. For more updates, Jon at Aucklandtrains.co.nz seems to be spending his entire holidays taking photos of the rail works going on around Auckland, so has regular updates.

Share this

10 comments

  1. I was in Auckland a couple of weeks before Christmas and I’m pretty sure I saw pieces of the passenger shelters being erected. There were some panels of decorative concrete up on the trench walls too.

  2. It has been a little disappointing looking at this summer holiday’s work going on around New Lynn/Avondale. Ontrack are (finally) connecting the bit between St Jude Street and Veronica Street; the new crossing at St George Street will apparently be laid between 4 and 12 January. But you’ll notice from our shot that Ontrack have decided to maintain the link as a single track over a brief 10m single track at the future Avondale station which means no possibility of eliminating the inherent delay. Moreover, Fletcher’s have evidently decided they don’t need to pay their workers penalty rates over the break, so nothing has been happening in the trench. As for the Avondale Station timeframe, it’s a joke; there are about five people working on it at any one time but I guess this is what happens when it isn’t a motorway involved. I guess slowtracking and overbudgeting is the name of the game when it comes to developing rail infrastructure; can’t understand why Fletchers, etc, aren’t lobbying for more rail development.

  3. It is interesting comparing this year and last year in that respect. This time last year things were going absolutely gang-busters on the rail network with huge changes made in Avondale and New Lynn.

    I shall check out what’s happening around Newmarket some time in the next few years days- perhaps that’s where the focus is?

  4. As a regular western line train user it really annoys me that they don’t get the double tracking finished down to the Whau Creek as that would eliminate most of the delays that occur. When traveling home on the express all the time that is made up by not stopping at stations is usually lost again waiting 5-10 minutes for a train to come from the other side with no passengers on it.

    As for New Lynn there is deffinitely passenger canopys erected although they don’t have any glass on them yet, also they had been busy putting up decorative panels and the platform is being tiled. On the trench it seems like it is nearly completed with only one section the Veronica/Ward St crossing still to be filled with concrete for the base, in saying that much of the track base still needs to be laid. Much of the work before christmas seemed to be focused on the area between Portage Rd and the Whau bridges, I think they were installing storm water pipes etc and perhaps preparing to lower the level crossing so it will trains can get into the trench. This wouldn’t affect the road as there is currently a bump in it to bring it up to meet the train line (this peice of work may not happen until they are actually ready to put the line into trench.

    The only reason I can think that they are not actively working on these to stations is that they are using all the available manpower to get the other upgrades completed (Kingsland underpass, Mt Eden Rd and Sandringham Rd track lowering, Grafton, Newmarket, Parnell tunnel, Strand bridge and St Marks bridge)

  5. Heh, good point Matt.

    And in terms of minimising the length of single-track, I think that should be a priority. The double-track has been built from St Jude Street to Whau Creek bridge right? It just hasn’t been hooked up yet?

  6. Almost, the last of the level crossing at St Georges Rd is going in at the moment I think, as for the rest of the line the sleepers are down but track is resting on it so it should just be a attaching the rails and hooking it all up to the other lines. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t want to put another set of points and signals in.

  7. One does get the feeling that often simple stuff just doesn’t get done that could make a big difference simply because nobody cares enough to make it happen. And we wonder why rail passengers feel like second-class citizens (and therefore, why most people avoid using the trains).

  8. Thats why I think it will be interesting to see what happens next year when all the maor network upgrades are complete (apart from electrification). Out west in particular they should do big promotional campaign to let people know it is finished and therefore the delays should be gone, perhaps having a few weeks of cheap tickets to boost patronage and getting people hooked to the idea of not having to drive. One of the advantages out west is the western line will generally have the best stations and also probably the best track conditions as it will all pretty much be new. I just hope other violia/arta gets the frequencies right and that westies flock to the trains to prove it was worth the investment.

  9. Yes it will be interesting to see what happens next year on the Western Line. I also hope that once integrated ticketing happens we might see a lot more West Auckland bus routes simply feeding into train stations rather than running all the way into the CBD. This should also boost patronage quite a bit I would imagine.

    Some good (20%ish) patronage gains throughout next year on the rail network will be very handy when lobbying for the CBD Rail tunnel.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *