Wednesday 30 April 2014

The Rise & Fall of the PIONEER Road Steamer

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

steamer

road-steamerroad-steamer2road-steamer3

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

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!  pioneer-aug1871 pioneer-aug71

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

new-steamer

better-onepioneer-1stpioneer-nov-71-2pioneer-where

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

pioneer-may-1872pioneer-jun-72On one last note, it seems the one the government was selling finally went to Auckland!

white-elephant

References: Papers Past

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