Rimutaka Tunnel The first shot was fired in 1948 when the Public Works Department started the tunnel with bores of at the western end and at the eastern end. A contract for completing the tunnel was let to a consortium of Morrison Knudsen Inc. and Downer and Company on 7 May 1951. The work commenced at the west end in July 1951 and at the east end in August. The contract was expected to be completed in four years, but the headings met on 20 April 1954 with the concrete lining finished a month later. New Zealand Railways took possession of the
Cross Creek railway station the driver had to sound three short whistle blasts in rapid succession, at frequent intervals. No such emergency is known to have occurred. In considering alternatives for a railway between the Hutt Valley and the Wairarapa district to bypass the increasingly costly Rimutaka Incline, various proposals for a tunnel were considered that would have involved an eastern portal emerging at Cross Creek. Despite all the work done on investigating these ideas, the alignment eventually chosen was one that saw the tunnel emerging into the Wairarapa in a gully to the north. Once work commenced on the Rimutaka Tunnel, the fate