Water From the West
Water From the West
Building the dams and tramlines in the Upper Nihotupu Valley for Auckland's water supply.
Harvey Stewart 2024 Privately Published, Auckland. 112 pp. ISBN 978-0-473-71216-7
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Blurb
Between 1905 and 1929 the Auckland City Council built dams in the Waitakere, Upper Nihotupu and Upper Huia valleys to provide water for the rapidly growing city. Access to each of these dams was by narrow gauge railway or tramline. This book tells the story of the construction of the tramlines and four dams in the Upper Nihotupu valley, only one of which is still in service today. A unique feature of the Upper Nihotupu dam construction access was a cable hauled incline which lifted the supply wagons 127m over a distance of 575m. The personal memoirs of one of the incline workers are included.
Review
This is a POP page.
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The author was an engineer for Watercare and its predecessors, working on the structures he writes about. It is not an archaeological exposition as such but goes deeply into the technology of how the dams were built to be of great interest to any historian of technology.
The book greatly benefits from the services of a professional designer to lift it above many self published efforts.
