Kimihia railway station
Kimihia Railway Station was on the North Island Main Trunk line, north of Huntly in the Waikato District of New Zealand. The station was in 1886 measured as south of Mercer, which is where an unnamed block is shown on the 1929 map, near the junction of Fisher Road with SH1, about north of the junction with the Kimihia branch. That junction was south of Auckland and from Wellington. One source said it was much nearer Huntly, where Kimihia Rd crossed the railway. Kimihia Rd level crossing was closed to traffic in 1945. History. The station opened  when the Main Trunk was extended from Mercer to Ngāruawāhia, on 13 August 1877, built on part of Robert Reilly Ralph's (later owner of Ralph's coalmine) farm. Kimihia was usually not shown in timetables and was often one of the minor stations not served by passenger trains. An 1894 petition asked for Kimihia siding be converted into a flag station. In 1895 trains called at Kimihia Siding for school children and it became a flag station from 7 February 1896. By the end of that year it had a shelter shed, passenger platform and a passing loop for  37 wagons. To ease congestion on the single track railway, a passing loop capable of holding 72 wagons was built in 1929. Work on doubling the track northwards started in 1937 and the station closed on 27 August 1939, when double track working started between Ohinewai and Huntly. In 1944 Kimihia became part of Huntly Borough. Kimihia colliery branch. Powers to construct the mine branch were given in 1885. Initially it was a branch around the southern shore of Lake Kimihia to the Taupiri Reserve Colliery Co. mine, which was opened on 1 August 1887 and named the Taupiri Branch . That mine closed due to a fire in 1910. State Coal Mines started an opencast mine in 1943 to extract the coal left by the previous mine. It produced coal from 1944, when agreement was reached to use the Taupiri Coal Co's sidings, but the branch wasn't reopened until 1946. The opencast mine closed in 1977 and was replaced by Huntly East Mine in 1978. On 21 August 1979 the first loaded train used the branch, which started north of Huntly and extended east to the coal loading bins. From 7 July 1981 the Railway Corporation took over  maintenance of the branch from the Mines Department. 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. The mine closure was announced on 8 October and the branch closed on 21 October 2015. It was when lifted in 2017.