page_title: Papanui railway station
section_title: Tram interchange (1880–1934)
hierarchical_section_title: Papanui railway station / History / Operations / Tram interchange (1880–1934)
caption_attribution_description: English: Papanui Railway Station in Restell Street; view of the railway tracks south.
context_page_description: Papanui railway station served the suburb of Papanui in northern Christchurch, New Zealand. It was on the Main North Line between the stations of Bryndwr and Styx, 5.3 kilometres north of Addington Junction. The station handled freight and passenger traffic from when it opened in 1872 until closing in the late 20th century, and from 1880 was the site of an interchange between passenger rail and trams until the 1930s.
  The station building remains and is currently tenanted by a restaurant. There have been proposals for the reinstatement of commuter rail services on the Main North Line that would involve the use of Papanui but thus far, none has been approved.
context_section_description: The Canterbury Tramway Company opened its Papanui tramline on 24 June 1880 that included a short spur along Harewood Road to a terminus behind the Papanui railway station.  Here, it also constructed a shed to stable tramcars.  As it had several months earlier also opened a line from Cathedral Square to the Christchurch railway station on Moorhouse Avenue, it was able to offer its own service between the two railway stations, competing with the trains provided by the Railways Department.  Tram services were timed to meet trains on the Main North Line as well as for passengers from the Waiau and Oxford branches.  Trams were steam-hauled, but in 1893, the company got into financial difficulty and was liquidated.  The Christchurch Tramway Company assumed control of its operations and proceeded to phase out the steam motors in favour of horse-drawn services.
  The Christchurch Tramway Board acquired the Papanui tramline and upgraded it for electric running.  The line officially reopened on 5 June 1905, coinciding with the commencement of electric tram services in Christchurch.  The concession by which trams were able to enter land at Papanui railway station had been issued to the Canterbury Tramway Company.  When the Tramway Board assimilated the service, a dispute arose with the Railways Department, which refused to transfer the concession to the Board.  An agreement reached in 1906 granted right-of-entry to the Board until 1926 for an annual payment of £5.
  A further dispute arose in 1916 when the Board wanted to extend its line to accommodate larger trailers.  The matter was resolved when the Board had land it used at the entrance to the Papanui station yard vested as part of a public road.
  When the concession came up for renewal in 1926, the Railways Department offered an indefinite extension, which the Board accepted.  However, by 1930 patronage of the service to the railway station had dropped to levels that were no longer commercially viable.  With the onset of the Great Depression, the Board sought ways to save on costs, and considered the possibility of discontinuing the Papanui railway station connection.  In 1932 the matter was examined and a passenger count revealed that an average of 96 passengers used 76 trips to the station weekly, but the Boards costs for providing this service were not passed on to the passengers (no extra was charged for going to the railway station vs. Papanui).  It therefore decided to terminate services at the Papanui Township.  This concerned the Railways Department to the extent that they waived the annual fee for use of their land at the railway station to keep the service going.  Use of the railway station service continued to decline to the point where passengers had almost completely abandoned it, and a new timetable introduced on 16 April 1934 for the Papanui tramline eliminated the railway station extension.
  The track for the spur remained in place until the line closed in 1954.  It occasionally used to store trailers once closed to passenger services.  After the tram tracks were lifted, the tramway reserve, which had become known as Station Road, was sealed by the Christchurch City Council and thereafter used as a public thoroughfare even though ownership of much of the land remained with the Railways Department for several more decades.
caption: Looking towards the Harewood Road level crossing
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