New Year Honour: Ohakune railway and community champion Bob Norling awarded QSM

The Ohakune Railway Station is a tourist attraction - thanks to Bob Norling and Main Trunk Rail Ohakune. Photo / supplied

Bob Norling's latest project may yet turn out to be his biggest – a major upgrade of the Tangiwai Memorial that commemorates New Zealand's worst railway disaster.

The Ohakune man was nominated for a Queen's Service Medal (QSM) for services to railway heritage and community. When he received the letter from Wellington he decided he might as well accept the honour.

"I thought I had better because if I don't it wouldn't look too good."

He was awarded the QSM in the New Year Honours.

Norling is active in Ruapehu Lions, the founder and motivator of Main Trunk Rail Ohakune, the chairman of the Tangiwai Memorial committee, a 30-year member of Ohakune 2000, a collaborator with Errol Vincent in the Old Coach Road project and a past chairman of the Ohakune Retailers' Association.

His achievements include a signal box and turntable reinstated at Ohakune Railway Station, the restoration of the station into a tourist attraction, and the Old Coach Road as another tourist attraction. He's also helped with a lot of Christmas parades, carrot carnivals and Santa caves, and been an advocate of "doing up" Ohakune.

"I'm one of the guys that generates the excitement and people join in," he said.

Norling arrived in Ohakune when he was 21. He was a New Zealand Railways communications and signals technician, tasked with building a system to control the signals and points between Waiouru and Taumarunui.

Ohakune was a major station then, "the heart of the main trunk line", and the control panel was to be based there. He did the job in 1964-5, "making poor station agents redundant", and in 1968 he married local woman Colleen Sue.

The marriage pulled him away from his "railway family" and into the Ohakune community. When Railways decided to move the control panel to Taumarunui he wanted to stay in Ohakune and bought a business, Ohakune TV Electrical.

His wife ran the business until Railways moved the panel in 1977, and he has now run it for 45 years.

Norling likes a project, and in 1990 he started Main Trunk Rail Ohakune to bring some life back to "the junction" end of town.

"Up here we are a little bit careless with saving our heritage. I want to give the area some recognition in our railway and logging heritage. Places like Ohakune built New Zealand," he said.

As a young man, he was responsible for pulling down the station's signal box. Main Trunk Rail Ohakune (MTRO) reinstated one, sourced from Paekakariki, and then a turntable from New Plymouth.

"You can't have steam train trips without the turntable."

In 1989 there was a demolition order on the Troup-designed railway station. Instead of pulling it down, MTRO restored it.

"In today's world, our railway station is quite a tourist focal point. In 1990 it wasn't," Norling said.

He and Errol Vincent worked together to open up the Old Coach Road, crawling through the bush to find its cobblestones and flying above to pick out the different colours of the trees showing its route. Together they did the paperwork that got it Category 1 status with Heritage New Zealand in 2004.

Norling says he has had lots of help from "innovative and hardworking" people along the way – from Ruapehu District Council, the Conservation Department, Ruapehu iwi Ngāti Rangi and Ohakune's "lovely lot of retailers". His wife has helped by tolerating absences from family life.

He's now embarked on the Tangiwai Memorial project, which may be his biggest yet. A toilet was added to the accident site recently and it is getting seven large information panels and the space to park tourist buses.