Shed gains new look after it's restored

Not only has the shed been restored to tip-top condition in keeping with its original colours but it has 50m of genuine railway track laid inside. PHOTO/FILE

WHAT a wonderful job the Rail Heritage Trust and all the others who banded together to help restore Greytown's old goods shed have done. The historic building is one of only a handful of its type still standing on its original site and its makeover has brought it back to its heyday for all to enjoy.

Nestled at the bottom end of West St the goods shed would have a few stories to tell if it were able to do so, after all you don't sit and watch a town and its people go by for 135 years without building up a storehouse of memorabilia.

But the building can't talk so it is over to those of us who are old enough to remember Greytown in the days when a steam train ran the branch line to Woodside, to do so.

It was a journey that was quite commonplace for many youngsters, who were not official passengers but guests of the train driver who would, with a little coaxing, allow kids to scramble up into the cab of the puffing billy and take the short trip out along the branch line to Woodside, and return you in due course. Can you imagine that happening today?

The puffing billy passed into history in the mid-1950s when many branch lines deemed uneconomic by the then-National Government of Sidney Holland were closed.

Throughout the land most of the old railway buildings went west too, but our one stayed on West St serving new masters until such time as Euan McQueen and fellow members of the Rail Heritage Trust got together with South Wairarapa District Council and launched a plan for its restoration.

The result is remarkable.

Not only has the shed been restored to tip-top condition in keeping with its original colours but it has 50m of genuine railway track laid inside.

In a way its restoration is a lesson to us all, especially government departments and local bodies who may have restorable, historic buildings tucked away somewhere.

If they are brought back to life they are a definite drawcard for tourists and day-trippers.

Gone are the days, thankfully, when anything old - regardless of how sturdy it was - fell to the wrecker's ball.