Along with cycling or walking the Rail Trail, motoring is a joy in Central Otago. There’s virtually no traffic. Highways are smooth and well maintained. But when the Otago Central Railway was thrusting its way from Middlemarch towards Clyde, horse and cart and deeply rutted tracks ruled the day. Getting anywhere took an age. Rail was easily the preferred mode of transport and in an agricultural region as important to 1900s Dunedin as the Strath Taieri, it made economic sense to provide farmers with handily placed stations. This explains the relatively small distances separating Rock & Pillar station, Ngapuna station and Middlemarch township.

Before the railway arrived at Rock and Pillar, it was already established as a popular rest stop for passengers on the Naseby – Middlemarch Railhead coach. Near the station site was a substantial hotel, ‘Moloneys’, famous for its hospitality. Nothing remains of it, Railways Department housing or nearby school.

Inside the red painted corrugated iron gangers’ shed at the Rock and Pillar Station site is the first or last (depending on which way you’re travelling the Rail Trail) of a series of information panels produced by the Otago Central Rail Trail Trust. The 12 gangers’ sheds along the Trail. Sheds housing information panels are identified with an ‘i’ on the map in the Official Rail Trail Passport. Between Rock and Pillar and Hyde village are three sheds with information panels.

Rock and Pillar - Ngapuna

• 7km separates Rock and Pillar from Ngapuna Station site.
• The opportunity for a leisurely ride or walk through productive farmland against a backdrop of the Rock and Pillar Range and Strath Taieri Ridge.

Rock and Pillar - Hyde

• 14km separates Rock and Pillar from Hyde village.
  

When this eerie though spectacular cloud formation appears over the Rock and Pillar Range it signals the likelihood of strong winds on the Rail Trail --- Rail Trailers now have five gangers’ sheds to provide shelter in the Strath Taieri.. Photo: Whites Aviation Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington

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