North–South Junction

The North–South Junction is a section of single-track rail line about 3.4 km long, north of Wellington, New Zealand, between the closed (2011) Muri railway station (north of Pukerua Bay railway station) and the (lower) Paekakariki railway station to the north. It is part of the Kapiti Line section of the North Island Main Trunk line between Wellington and Auckland, and part of the Wellington–Manawatu Line, built by the Wellington & Manawatu Railway Company (WMR).

Because of the commuter traffic from Wellington to Waikanae plus freight traffic, the line north is double tracked to just before the bridge over SH59, before the Waikanae River bridge south of Waikanae railway station, and the line south from Pukerua Bay is double tracked to the terminus at Wellington railway station.

The line is on an unstable hillside, the Paekakariki Escarpment, and with a two-lane section of State Highway 59 (formerly State Highway 1; to 7 December 2021) below, which runs along the edge of the sea front, the route is almost perpendicular in places and the section constitutes a bottleneck for rail transport north of Wellington. The line climbs 200 feet in 5 miles going south (61m in 8 km); the hillside is a “creeper”. The line has steep gradients south from Paekakariki and climbing to Pukerua Bay at a ratio of 1 in 66, with short sections of 1 in 60 and 1 in 118.

The Wellington-Manawatu Line was built by the Wellington & Manawatu Railway Company (WMR) in the 1880s. It ran from Wellington to Longburn near Palmerston North, where it connected with the New Zealand Railways (NZR) system, and it was handed over to the NZR at the end of 1908.

The Escarpment walking track runs above this section of road and rail.