Kimihia railway station

The station opened when the Main Trunk was extended from Mercer to Ngāruawāhia, on 13 August 1877,[5] built on part of Robert Reilly Ralph's (later owner of Ralph's coalmine) 1,000 acres (400 ha) farm.[6]

Kimihia was usually not shown in timetables[7][8] and was often one of the minor stations not served by passenger trains.[9][10]

To ease congestion on the single track railway, a passing loop capable of holding 72 wagons was built in 1929.[11] Work on doubling the track northwards started in 1937[12] and the station closed on 27 August 1939,[13] when double track working started.

In 1944 Kimihia became part of Huntly Borough.[14]

Kimihia railway branch line can be faintly seen in the 1941 aerial photo, which follows the same route as the line open from 1946 to 2017, as shown on the 2018 Topomap. The lake was largely drained to allow for opencast coal mining

Powers to construct the mine branch were given in 1885.[15] Initially it was a 1 mi 76 ch (3.1 km) branch[16] around the southern shore of Lake Kimihia to the Taupiri Reserve Colliery Co. mine, which was opened on 1 August 1887[17] and named the Taupiri Branch.[18] That mine closed due to a fire in 1910.[19] State Coal Mines started an opencast mine in 1943 to extract the coal left by the previous mine.[14] It produced coal from 1944, when agreement was reached to use the Taupiri Coal Co's sidings,[20] but the branch wasn't reopened until 1946.[21] The opencast mine closed in 1977 and was replaced by Huntly East Mine[22] in 1978. Until 2013 the mine was producing about 450,000 tonnes of coal a year, some 95% of it going by rail to Glenbrook steel mill.[23] The mine closure was announced on 8 October[24] and the branch closed on 21 October 2015.[25] It was 3 km (1.9 mi) when lifted in 2017.[26]

2019 view of Kimihia Branch from NIMT

• 1952 photo of branch at the mine
• Video of the line in 2017