In 1930 the incomplete line was mothballed but the Labour Party said if it was elected it would finish the line to Wairoa and duly did so, opening the line for goods trains in 1937.
Thirty years after Sir Joseph's sod turning the Gisborne link was completed in 1942, finally allowing goods trains to make the journey from Napier to Gisborne.
The Mohaka Viaduct is the engineering marvel of the line. Spanning the Mohaka River near Raupunga, it is 277m long and 95m high, making it the tallest viaduct in Australasia.
The line features other sizeable viaducts, tunnels and bridges, many that were promptly repaired after being severely damaged by earthquakes, floods and slips.
The Waikokopu slip in 1955 closed the line for 10 days and in 1957 four weeks of 24-hour work with 19 bulldozers and 70 men restored 274m buried by a hillside.
During Cyclone Bola in 1988 a slip stranded a freight train at Waikaou for the three weeks it took to repair.
The 1980s was a decade of shakeups for rail. Government owned, rail was unprofitable despite a legislated monopoly on long-distance freight - road carriers needed to apply for a permit to deliver goods between towns.
The government removed controls and restructured rail to make it more competitive but in 1993 New Zealand Rail was sold for $328.3 million and renamed Tranz Rail.
After public listings and challenged finances it became Toll NZ and in 2008 the Government bought the rail and sea assets back for $665 million, rebranding it KiwiRail, a state-owned enterprise.
While rail was out of fashion, lobbying for it was not.
Ken Crispin worked on the railway, based in Napier in the mid 1970s, but was unimpressed with what he saw when he returned from Canada in 1998.
"Rail had been run down to virtually nothing," he said.
He formed Gisborne Rail Action Group, an incorporated society.
"We have been fighting to get the rail to Gisborne operating properly. Every year we told the councils, 'You have to get rail up and running'."
He said a big part of the problem facing any rail resurgence was the removal of rail spurs, 16 were removed from Gisborne.
While the Action Group first lobbied for increased investment for East Coast rail, rail was losing millions of dollars annually.
It faced a much bigger struggle in 2012.
KiwiRail was already considering ceasing operations when a section of line north of Wairoa was washed out after heavy rain and not repaired.
The service to Wairoa remained but KiwiRail said it would cost up to $4.3 million to fix the slip damage plus other maintenance work was needed.
New Zealand's biggest lobby group Federated Farmers joined the push to reopen the line.
Federated Farmers Gisborne-Wairoa president Hamish Cave said freight transport was necessary to create jobs.
"It's no secret we've got constraints with our roads and this is why we need the Government to sit down with us, employers and the council to look at all the freight transport options we need," he said.
"This isn't an either or - we need better roads, better shipping and, of course, a rail line.
"Government policy is too skewed to the cities where roads of national significance are about solving congestion."
"There needs to be recognition regions like Gisborne need our own roads of national significance to help us develop economically."
Six months after the washout KiwiRail announced it would shut down the whole line, saying repairs and increased maintenance costs of $6 million per year made the line unprofitable.
At the same time the government announced up to $4 million would be spent upgrading State Highway 2, with new passing lanes between Napier and Gisborne.
Wairoa sawmill Clyde Lumber went into receivership and liquidation with the loss of 22 jobs, citing the closure of the Napier-Gisborne rail link as the catalyst. The company sent sawn timber to Waikato for processing and road transport was too expensive. Besides, there were not enough truck-and-trailer units in the district to ship his product nor saw mill capacity.
Business and councils met, reports commissioned and subsidies offered, but still the line remained closed.
Hawke's Bay Chamber of Commerce CEO Murray Douglas mooted a private consortium to buy the Napier-to-Gisborne rail line.
"We know we have an extraordinarily efficient port in Napier and we know we have huge production coming out of the hills. So if KiwiRail won't do it then why don't we buy it? It requires courage, it requires vision, it requires focus but we can do it," he said.
"Fixing the slips is the easy part of the decision, the hard part is the capital requirements for the next 10 years of the total rail line, given that some of the sleepers are a bit old and some of the bridges may need strengthening.
"It is inconceivable to have a massively productive part of New Zealand, as it is in the Hawke's Bay, without rail. To not have that option is short-sighted."
Ravensdown made a re-opening less likely when it announced in 2014 it would no longer use trains from its Napier fertiliser plant, where product went by rail to New Plymouth, Wanganui, Utiku and Feilding. Until the line was shut it also went to Gisborne.
The farmer-owned co-operative was the only user of fertiliser carriages and KiwiRail proposed increased charges to cover upkeep.
"The issue for KiwiRail and Ravensdown is the very high expenditure associated with the maintenance of ageing rolling stock," a Ravensdown spokesman said.
"This led to KiwiRail proposing a rail freight rate that was just uneconomic. If more businesses had used the rail freight option over the years, then of course those maintenance costs would have been spread more evenly."
Last week it was announced the line to Wairoa will open in about a year's time, thanks to a doubled volume of pine trees reaching harvest date.
Napier Port runs a freight service for log exporters and has trains from Whanganui, Palmerston North and Woodville.
The trains sit idle on weekends and will be used to haul logs from Wairoa, two trains a day on Saturdays and two on Sundays.
Both KiwiRail and Napier Port are confident of success, which will trigger an expanded service during the week.
Forest Management NZ (FMNZ) manage the Roger Dickie forest syndicates, which collectively have more than 11,000ha of pine forests in the Wairoa District.
Forest manager and joint CEO Steve Bell said his company had supported the reopening of the Napier-Wairoa rail link since its 2012 closure.
"We are therefore delighted at the news this is now to become a reality," he said.
"With significant harvest volumes coming on stream, the rail link will provide both FMNZ as managers and the forest owners with greater options while strengthening links direct to the port."
Napier Port chief executive Garth Cowie said there was already a suitable staging area in Wairoa and the plan was for exporters to engage one of the Napier Port marshalling companies to load the logs.
Non-log freight was a possibility for the future, but not anticipated.
A possible stumbling block to the contract between KiwiRail and Napier Port is the cost, yet to be determined, of bringing the Napier to Wairoa track up to standard after mothballing.
KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy said it would be known early next year.
Mr Cowie said the cost would be passed on to customers "but we think we will still be competitive".
Napier Port is owned by Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
Councillor and chairman of the Hawke's Bay Regional Transport Committee, Alan Dick, said the announcement was "the best Hawke's Bay good news story for a very long time".
He said financial support from regional council was essential to the commercial arrangement.
"Whatever the cost, the justification is clear and two-fold: safety from avoidance of heavy traffic congestion on State Highway 2, as the massive new log harvests start from next year and, economic development opportunities and options for Wairoa and the northern part of our region."
Mr Cowie is confident in the continuance of log exports. There were established markets overseas and, while it faced varying demand from China, there were newer markets ready to take excess volume "for quite some time".
Mr Reidy was circumspect about the prospect of re-opening the line north of Wairoa to Gisborne.
"The washout in 2012 was quite extensive. We are looking at various options for that part of the line and are open to options.
"No decision has been made yet - it is probably going to be a big infrastructure play to address the washout there but there are some tourism-related activities that might be of interest to us."
While delighted with the re-opening of the line to Wairoa, Ken Crispin plans to continue lobbying.
"We've only got part of the way - we've got to go to Gisborne."