There were long term plans to restore the huts before they were damaged.
Photo / Ewan Pound
There were long term plans to restore the huts before they were damaged.
Photo / Ewan Pound
Members of SteamRail Wanganui Inc were left "gutted" when they discovered two vintage huts had been badly damaged by vandals.
The members were together on Sunday morning for a regular meeting at the train yard on Taupo Quay when the damage was spotted.
President Blair Jordan said it was senseless.
"We had some bollards stored in one of the huts, so it looks like they've broken into the huts with the bollard and from what we can tell they've used the bollards as a battering ram to basically destroy them," Jordan said.
"They did need work and needed to be restored but we were slowly getting through other stuff before we could move onto those and as we could afford it, and they're basically wrecked and we can't do anything with them.
"Every school holidays we get something, whether it's tagging or they try to break a board off a wagon, and we have been broken into before," Jordan said.
"We've had fittings pinched off our wagons before but it's almost guaranteed when it's school holidays something happens down there.
"We've had the odd door and window kicked in but nothing like breaking walls off buildings before, like they have to these two boxes."
Several boards were smashed from the hut's wall.
Photo / Ewan Pound
Jordan said it looked like whoever was responsible for the damage tried to break the padlocks on the nearby wagons which were also sprayed in graffiti.
He said the two huts that were damaged had a strong connection to the region's rail history.
"We were donated those worker huts from members of the Whanganui public who had them as sleep-outs in their backyards who didn't need them any more," Jordan said.
"They originate from the steam days and were used not only in Whanganui but all over the country for the track gang.
"They would've been transported by wagon, lifted on and off by a steam crane, and transported to work sites which are what the gang would have lived in when they were at the site.
"Once that job finished they get moved to the next work site and wherever the work was."
Jordan said huts like the ones that were damaged were used from the early 1900s up to the 1960s, and said the plan was to restore them in the future.
"We'll have to have a better study to see exactly what is broken and what we can replace.
"Ideally we'd love to put them under cover but we don't have the room in our shed at the moment with other projects we're trying to finish first."
Jordan said the incident would be reported to police.
The public toilets at Cooks Gardens were sprayed in graffiti in another act of vandalism over the weekend.
