The Rise & Fall of the PIONEER Road Steamer

In Nov 1871 James Linklater was the engineer & driver of the newly acquired ‘Pioneer’ road steamer.

And so eventually it was deemed that  this new road steamer would be suitable for NZ conditions and one was purchased.

Then over the next nine months of testing it turned out that the road steamer was not so good for the conditions in NZ after all!   

But wait…… I had originally thought that was the one bound for Kaiapoi but then I found this small sentence in a Parliamentary report:-

It seems it didn’t take them too long to find out that this one was also quite unsuitable.

On one last note, it seems the one the government was selling finally went to Auckland!

References: Papers Past