Rimutaka - Remutaka walk and cycleway - Kaitoke start point

The Incline walk and cycle-way from Kaitoke to Cross Creek in the Wairarapa travels over the original route of the railway. It extends 17 km and takes 4 hours but is easy. There are two bridges and three tunnels, so a torch is handy. You can swim and picnic en route and even camp overnight if you fancy that. From the Kaitoke car park to the summit is ten kilometres making the journey an easy return cycle trip.

There is a lot of history here. Interpretative signs on the route and in the shelters tell the story of the rail route which used Fell engines and a central rail for braking on the Wairarapa side. It operated for 77 years finishing in 1955 when the 8.8 kilometre Rimutaka rail tunnel was completed.

The rail trail is now part of the Rimutaka Cycle Trail leading from the Hutt Valley over the incline and past Lake Wairarapa to Ocean Beach.

The Imperial Album of 1896 described the train trip :

THE RIMUTAKA RAIIWAY, -

This triumph of engineering skill connects Wellington with the rich Wairarapa District of the North Island. Leaving Wellington in the morning the train on reach­ing the Upper Hutt, and passing through an alluvial goldfield, moves along a wooded plateau to Mungaroa, and past Kaitoke to the Summit Station ­Rimutaka. The scenery here is truly magnificent, composed of high hills containing rimu, veronica and birch trees, and also a variety of beautiful ferns and mosses. The Summit Station is at an altitude of 2389 feet, and here the trains pass each other. The railroad passes through four tunnels after leaving Kaitoke. In the descent to the Wairarapa country between two of the tunnels is Siberia Point," where, in September 1880, the train was blown off the rails, and several of the passengers killed. Since that accident a break-wind has been erected and two locomotives are used, one in the front, and the other in the rear of the train, while a centre rail, eighteen inches high, acts as a brake, so that although a hurricane may be expected here there is now no danger owing to these necessary precautions. The Rimutaka railway skirts the northern part of the Wairarapa Lake, and the train reaches Masterton at mid-day, so that if desirable one may return to Wellington the same day.

REMUTAKA CYCLE TRAIL HIGHLIGHTS TOUR