I'm fond of you good people of Twitter, so I'm going to post a bit about the Little River branch railway in New Zealand instead of snarky tweets about Valentine's Day.

Why? No deeper reason than looking at my rail trail pics yesterday, but look for a small Val Day tie-in. 1/13

Little River is a pleasant village on Banks Peninsula on the way to Akaroa. Here's a screenshot of Google Maps showing some of the locations I mention, like Southbridge, Lincoln, Birdlings Flat. The unlabelled lake east of Ellesmere is Lake Forsyth, more of which is to come. 2/

Railways once criss-crossed this area but you can't tell that on Google. Let's turn to a snippet of @svdweerden's fine work. The line to Southbridge opened in 1875; construction of a branch from Lincoln began 1880. It reached Birdlings Flat in 1882 and Little River in 1886. 3/

Why a railway to Little River? For its timber. An unknown photographer snapped this large tōtara in the area c.1870. ( @NLNZ PA1-o-399-26)

Now, you might be wondering about Akaroa, and fair enough; it is the oldest town in Canterbury—the site of French settlement in 1840. 4/

Akaroa residents wanted a railway, as did other Cantabrians. The Akaroa Mail, 24 Sept 1878, reported on a meeting at Southbridge. As one fellow put it, Akaroa's port was "placed by Nature for the [Canty] Plains, and must eventually become the great harbor of NZ". Optimistic! 5/

James Macandrew, minister of public works, told parl't in August 1878 that a railway to Akaroa was a "most important undertaking". A royal commission in 1880, however, rejected it as too expensive—it needed a long tunnel. So, people changed from trains to coaches at L River. 6/

The pic in the last tweet is c.1895 (Chch Lib'y PhotoCD 8 IMG0006). Little River station was the hub of the community and local economy. These snaps from the Shuttleworth collection, via Kete Christchurch, show horse-drawn vehicles outside it in 1906 and another angle in 1908. 7/

An experiment began in 1926: this Edison battery-electric railcar ran services from Christchurch to Little River until a depot fire destroyed it in 1934. Efficient, comfy, quiet. What might've been if storage batteries, not diesel tech, had matured first. (NLNZ PA1-q-101-091) 8/

Here's a train to Little River at Sockburn, March 1950 ( @ArchivesNZ AAVK 6390 B31). A year later, NZR was short on coal during the waterfront strike and slashed its timetables, suspending Little River passenger trains entirely. They never resumed. Formal cancellation 1952. 9/

NZR prematurely and deliberately discarded viable passenger services to both Little River and Southbridge, but that's a story for another day (or, well, the forthcoming passenger rail book). The Little River line closed completely on 1 July 1962. But that's not the end... 10/

The community has restored Little River's station so it's still a local hub, complete with old trains. The DSA class diesel loco arrived on Valentine's Day two years ago. Have some samples from their gallery ( https://littleriverrailway.co.nz/gallery ) and trust page ( http://littleriver.org.nz/?page_id=5309 ) 11/

So, circling back to my pics that I mentioned, taken on 11 January 2015. I didn't stop in Little River, but it's not just the station that survives: the old line is now a rail trail! Here's the new decking atop abutments of an old rail bridge over a tiny stream at Catons Bay. 12/

I followed the old line alongside Lake Forsyth. It was a nice walk and cyclists seemed to be getting good use from the rail trail too. And so the Little River railway, in a sense, lives on today as a good activity with a bit of history on Banks Peninsula. 13/end