Or at least some of it is; more of this book's 188 pages are allocated to the mines and sawmills in this scenic West Coast area near Ngakawau than the light industrial railways - tramways - that served them and are probably more of interest to 'Coasters' than to anyone else.
Description of the main Charming Creek tramway is the subject of Chapter 10 and the usual weird and wonderful assortment of tractors (some literally that with minor conversions) and locomotives or 'lokeys' is covered in Chapter 11, before the next Chapter delves into recollections of the employees and then the nature of the present day walkway, which as the main cover photo shows, has much of the trackage still extant (although natural movements have distorted much of it since abandonment causing the hiker to wonder how anything could actually have run over it).
As has been mentioned before, NZR locomotives have had many books published about them over the years but there has been scant coverage of private industrial motive power, and this book serves as a useful documention of some more of it.
The book has a generous number of illustrations in b/w of the period when things were operating and some in colour of the post-abandonment scene, plus some bespoke maps and diagrams and an assortment of memorabilia.
The layout choice of main text in a full-width single column sans-serif font gives an overall appearance more of a government report than a book and the choice of fading large blocks of some of the colour photos for overlaid text is irksome. But there is plenty of information provided about most aspects and readers should be generally satisfied.
A4 portrait format, soft cover with flaps. $53 in our shop.
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