Inch Valley is a lightly populated rural locality in the
Otago
Otago (, ; ) is a regions of New Zealand, region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island and administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local go ...
region of
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
's
South Island
The South Island ( , 'the waters of Pounamu, Greenstone') is the largest of the three major islands of New Zealand by surface area, the others being the smaller but more populous North Island and Stewart Island. It is bordered to the north by ...
. It is northwest of
Palmerston and
Glenpark, east of
Stoneburn, on the banks of the
Shag River. Economic activity around Inch Valley is
agricultural
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...
.
Transport
Inch Valley is between Glenpark and
Dunback on
State Highway 85.
For 104 years, a
branch line railway
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
passed through Inch Valley; for 68 of these years, it served as a railway junction. The
Dunback Branch from the
Main South Line through Inch Valley to Dunback opened on 29 August 1885, to open up the country and serve farming interests. On 31 March 1900 the short
Makareo Branch from Inch Valley northeast to a limeworks in
Makareao opened. Passengers in Inch Valley were served solely by
mixed train
A mixed train or mixed consist is a train that contains both passenger and freight cars or wagons. In some countries, the term refers to a freight train carrying various different types of freight rather a single commodity. Although common in the ...
s that ran between Palmerston and Dunback. Due to declining patronage these were cancelled on 10 August 1930 and replaced by goods-only trains. Inch Valley's railway station had a small shelter shed for passengers, a loading bank for freight and a loop for 15 wagons; 100 metres away was a ballast siding.
On 1 January 1968 the Dunback Branch was closed due to substantial financial losses. Local freight was no longer carried; trains ran through Inch Valley without stopping thrice weekly to serve the Makareao limeworks. On 1 June 1989 this line closed. The railway
formation is visible around Inch Valley; at the old station site, a set of
points and the loading bank are still in place. A 15-span trestle bridge that took the Makareao Branch over the Shag River was destroyed in the mid-1990s as a military training exercise.
[Leitch and Scott, ''Exploring New Zealand's Ghost Railways'', 89.]
References
{{Waitaki District, New Zealand
Populated places in Otago