The Palmerston North–Gisborne Line (PNGL) is a secondary main line railway in the North Island of New Zealand. It branches from the North Island Main Trunk at Palmerston North and runs east through the Manawatū Gorge to Woodville, where it meets the Wairarapa Line, and then proceeds to Hastings and Napier in Hawke's Bay before following the coast north to Gisborne. Construction began in 1872, but the entire line was not completed until 1942. The line crosses the runway of Gisborne Airport, one of the world's only railways to do so since Pakistan's Khyber Pass Railway closed.
In conjunction with the Moutohora Branch that ran north from Gisborne between 1900 and 1959, the line was originally intended to connect to the East Coast Main Trunk, described in 1875 as the North Island trunk line, but the difficult inland section between the Tāneatua Branch in the Bay of Plenty and the Moutohora Branch was never completed.
The line has been freight only since October 2001, when the Bay Express passenger train was cancelled. The northern portion of the line from Napier to Gisborne was reviewed as part of KiwiRail's turnaround plan, and was effectively mothballed north of Wairoa due to four significant washouts during a storm in March 2012. In October 2012 KiwiRail announced the line from Napier to Gisborne would be officially mothballed (but not closed). The Napier - Wairoa section reopened for forestry traffic in June 2019.
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