Media Release

March 4, 2009

New roof for historical rail station

Work is underway to return the historical Henderson Railway Station to its former glory.

Contractors started on essential repairs to the Railside Avenue building about two weeks ago and are replacing the roof. The current structure was built in 1912, although the original station, which comprised of a passenger platform shelter shed, a cart dock and goods shed was built in 1897.

Waitakere City Council last year made a $50,000 grant to the Henderson Heritage Trust to re-roof the building to keep it weathertight and to reduce the risk of it deteriorating further and becoming a target for vandals.

The old railway station building is listed as a Category 1 heritage item.

The KiwiRail Group is currently finalising details of the lease for the station building, which sits within the rail corridor, with the heritage trust. Once this is completed it will enable the trust to restore the entire building.

Having a lease would also mean it could apply for additional funding from charitable trusts to carry out the restoration.

The trust has signalled that the refurbished station building could then become functional once again, perhaps as office space, a café of information centre.

Henderson Heritage Trust has worked in partnership with the council to achieve the successful restoration of several local buildings including, Falls Hotel and St Michael's Chapel.

The re-roofing project is expected to take a further three weeks, weather-permitting.

Caption: Restoration work on the historical Henderson Railway Station has begun with contractors currently replacing the roof.

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