{"story":["Canterbury's deepwater port at Lyttelton was cut off from the plains by the Port Hills. In 1850 settlers climbed the steep, narrow Bridle Path from Lyttelton to the site of Christchurch, which was still bare plain while Lyttelton was a town of about 300. Heavy goods had to be unloaded at Lyttelton and put aboard small craft that crossed the dangerous Sumner bar to Ferrymead, near the mouth of the Heathcote River, where they were loaded into wagons for Christchurch. From late 1863 those wagons were pulled by New Zealand's first steam locomotives, on a line opened on 1 December 1863. Ferrymead was only a stopgap, and a tunnel through the hills had been talked about from the earliest years of the settlement.","William Moorhouse, elected provincial superintendent in 1857, proposed a rail tunnel in October 1858 on the recommendation of George Robert Stephenson, nephew of the railway pioneer George Stephenson. Moorhouse won the support of the provincial council and the Stafford government to raise a loan of up to £300,000, against the opposition of James FitzGerald, the former superintendent and by then Canterbury's agent in England, who later started the Press newspaper to fight the scheme. The English contractors, Smith and Knight, withdrew; Te Ara blames the reported hardness of the rock, while NZHistory says they demanded more money. In January 1861 Moorhouse went to Melbourne and signed George Holmes & Co., whose £240,000 contract for the 9.6-kilometre line to Lyttelton included £195,000 for the 2.6-kilometre tunnel. On 17 July 1861, in appalling weather, Moorhouse turned the first sod, and about 1,500 people rioted over the quality of the beer provided for them.","Miners worked the faces with picks and long chisels, fired gunpowder charges and loaded the spoil into horse-drawn wagons, advancing at about 3 metres a week. Many early workers left for the Otago gold rushes, water had to be drained, and smoke from the gunpowder was a problem until a flue was built in the top of the tunnel. Two workers died. The work was overseen by the provincial engineer, Edward Dobson, and in May 1867 the Lyttelton and Heathcote ends met. Several weeks later the tunnel was opened to the public for a day and hundreds walked through it. The first locomotive passed through on temporary rails on 18 November, a goods train followed a week later, and on 9 December 1867 the first passenger train ran through in 6½ minutes. Te Ara describes it as the first tunnel in the world driven through an extinct volcano, and NZHistory as the first to go through the walls of an ancient volcano.","The tunnel assured Lyttelton's role as Canterbury's port. Finishing work inside the tunnel continued for about three more years after passenger trains began running. Moorhouse earned the nickname 'Railway Billy'. A road tunnel through the Port Hills opened in 1964. The rail tunnel came through the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, and coal and container trains still use it to link port and plain. NZHistory includes it in its list of the history of New Zealand in 100 places."],"sources":[{"title":"Lyttelton Rail Tunnel","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/lyttelton-rail-tunnel","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Canterbury places – Lyttelton Harbour","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/canterbury-places/page-12","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"First passengers traverse Lyttelton rail tunnel","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-passengers-traverse-lyttelton-rail-tunnel","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Bridges and tunnels – Rail tunnels","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/bridges-and-tunnels/page-5","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Moorhouse, William Sefton","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m53/moorhouse-william-sefton","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"}]}