All aboard! The suburban section hiding a miniature railway

Anyone walking on this quiet suburban Whanganui street will have no idea one of the country’s most unusual properties lies just behind the large, green corrugated iron fence.

Over the last 11 years, Ian Jones has painstakingly recreated a fully functional miniature railway on his 759m² section in Castlecliff.

Over 370 metres of track has been laid out with 10 tunnels (yes, 10), two bridges, a station and a 600w electric loco train which chugs through the 12-minute loop. He previously had a 3.5hp Briggs & Stratton engine.
But that’s not all - there’s an elevated boardwalk over the tunnels between mature kawakawa and nikau palms, as well as a permanent house bus to hop off at and grab a cuppa before the next service to Nikau Junction.

Jones bought the barren block of land over a decade ago but building a train line was never on the cards then.

“The first thing I did was I bought the bus and put that on (the land),” says Jones. “Then I accidentally put a bid on a miniature railway locomotive on Trade Me and won the auction.”

He went to Cambridge to pick up the engine and “the guy had 300 metres of track through his property. I just drove it and thought, ‘I've got to build one of these, and I've got the land’. So I came home and started building.”

All the work was done by Jones himself and he reckons he has invested between $30,000-40,000 on the site.

He’s been an avid fan of trains since he was given a kit at the age of 10. Aged 70 now, it’s been a lifelong hobby and at one stage he also worked as a train coach builder, something which helped him in later years: “It gave me the good grounding of skills to be able to make and fix things.”

Jones says the design of the railway is a bit of an accident: “People say, ‘well, you've got a great designed layout’, and I have, but it was all by accident. It just evolved. If I'd sat down and planned it, I couldn't have planned it as good as it's come out.”

Asked how the neighbours react to the train line, Jones says: “They love it.

“With the one neighbour, who I have a lot to do with, she gets a lot of joy from hearing the laughter and happiness over the fence.”

Although not open to public, he does invite people over: “It's word of mouth. I'm often down at the local cafe, inviting families to come for a ride. It's always free. I never charge or anything silly like that. I just like to share the fun.”

Although he doesn’t live in the house bus itself, he describes its as very comfortable: “Full bathroom, full kitchen, double bed, plus double bunks for visitors. We've always had people living in it at different times, friends have come and stayed, and it's a very useful asset.”

Some recent health issues means he has decided to sell, but he has other properties to tinker with. A friend is also planning to build his own rail line, so Jones will help with that.

“The potential is somebody might buy (his property) and not want the railway, they just want the land. In which case, my friend who's about to build the railway, he'll buy it quite happily.”
In the meantime, Jones is happy to putter away, satisfied in creating one of the most unusual backyards in the country.

“I absolutely love making the track, putting it all together. I just love it all really. It's a great hobby."

You can watch a full loop of the train line here. The CV on 133 Cornfoot Street, Castlecliff was $220,000 in October 2022 and it’s to be sold by deadline (February 27). It’s been listed by Kerryn Irvin at Property Brokers Whanganui.