BREAKING OUT
Forestry and the dairy industry are not the happiest of bed fellows these days, as trees continue to be uprooted in favour of cows. But there was a time when dairy relied heavily on timber for butter boxes and cheese crates as packaging for exports. The Egmont Box Company was established in the early 20th century to fulfil this timber supply, but it became a victim of some poor business decisions, as NZ Logger’s resident forestry historian, Trevor Coker, details in this issue.
In 1913 Egmont Box held cutting rights in part of Taurewa over which the planned railway line would run. Tongariro Timber approached Egmont Box to see if they might be agreeable to construct part of the railway line for the mutual benefit of both parties. This would have enabled Egmont Box to cut its own timber and also provide the Tongariro Timber Company with a reduced construction cost and give access to some of its own forests.
But, as already described, the venture fell apart, causing the demise of the Tongariro Timber Company and also seriously affected The Egmont Box Company. But it still needed to get timber out of the forest efficiently.
So, it proposed to build a tramway into Taurewa Forest. The construction of Egmont Box's tramway started in 1935 and involved some massive earth works.
The construction of the tram was helped no end by the use of a Caterpillar 75 bulldozer. In its first 14 month’s service the bulldozer was estimated to have returned to the company the equivalent of the cost of its outlay in savings on earth movement alone. The company even sent employee, Morry Collier, to America to learn how to operate it.
When it was unloaded from the railway wagon at National Park it was driven to Taurewa and, as the existing bridges would not have carried its weight, streams had to be forded. This was, by all available records, the first bulldozer to be driven in the central King Country.
The company had an oil-fired Marion steam shovel fitted with a three-quarter yard bucket, which was also employed on the tramway formation, in particular digging the numerous deep cuttings.
The shovel was able to move along the rails as it worked by means of gears. It was held secure while working by clamps onto the rails. The shovel was later converted into a crane to load logs. Its remains can still be found on a short length of rail line in the forest.
The main tram line was to end up six miles long and had an additional four miles of branch lines into various blocks. It was used right up until the sawmill in Taurewa was closed.
The Bush Locos That Used The Line
To haul logs on a tram line you need a locomotive to pull the laden wagons, but they needed to be specially designed and built – a loco used on the main railway line would be too big and heavy.
Egmont Box had a Johnson 16-wheeler locomotive built in Invercargill in 1911 for use on its various tramways. This engine was first used at Ohutu from 1911 to 1920 and from 1920 to 1926 at Tuhua and it featured in NZ Logger magazine a couple of years back.
Although there is no record of it being used at Taurewa, the boiler was discovered at Taurewa in 1980 when the New Zealand Forest Service was replacing an old log bridge on the original Egmont Box Company’s old tram route, not far from the saw mill site.
The removal of the bridge for replacement with a concrete culvert brought the discovery of the Johnson boiler, which had been used for fill on the bridge approach. It formed the basis for a restoration by keen railway preservationists in Taumarunui.
As the company commenced operations there in 1935, and the locomotive was last used in 1926, it is not known why it ended up at Taurewa. One possibility is that it was kept as a standby locomotive.
The original boiler certificate would have expired in 1932 three years before operations at Taurewa started. Maybe the locomotive would have needed extensive boiler repairs before the issue of
a new certificate and, as the Climax locomotive (see below) was doing such an excellent job, these were never carried out.
Egmont Box had the 1914 Climax Model B (maker’s number 1317) since it was new. It was first used in 1915 at Ohutu, then at Kakahi from 1916 to 1929, then at Taurewa from 1929 to 1942.
At Taurewa it would haul two wagon loads of logs a day, each consisting of 10-to-12 sets of logs. It was a steep climb of some 190 metres (600 feet) from the end of the tram to the mill.
After the Taurewa mill closed, the locomotive sat for two years until it was bought by Smyth and Boryer at Arohena. It still survives today and is under re-build to a static display standard in Te Awamutu by the Climax 1317 Trust (see photos on page 42).
The Last Years Of The Egmont Box Company
When the Taurewa mill closed, Egmont Box shifted its operations back to the Eltham plant in Taranaki.
However, this plant soon proved to be in a poor condition after some 40 years operation and in 1945 the decision was made to shift operations to Tokoroa, where a new plant would be built.
This was to be for the sole manufacture of crates, as the introduction of fibre-board boxes had made the continued making of butter boxes uneconomic.
The new factory commenced operations in the 1946/47 season. It was built on an 18-acre site and the company entered into a 10-year contract with New Zealand Forest Products for the supply of timber.
The factory was designed to make some 300,000-to-350,000 crates per year. This represented about half the requirements of the 56 cheese producing companies in Taranaki. In 1957, a record of 639,908 crates were produced.
In the early 1960’s the introduction of rindless cheese drastically reduced the demand for cheese crates for export purposes.
Production continued to drop to the stage where it was resolved to wind up the company and dispose of the assets on June 27, 1966.
The entire Tokoroa undertaking was sold four days later to New Zealand Forest Products, so ending more than 60 years of The Egmont Box Company’s operation in New Zealand.
NZL