The station’s not worth saving
21st August 2010

I’m being asked for money to save our railway station. I’m not immune to the request, having taken an interest in the debates that have steamed around the building for years.

I know the station. I’ve looked at it. I’ve looked at it closely. I’ve walked around it and kicked the tyres. I’ve pulled over on West Street and studied it across the rail yards. I’ve run my hands over its sagging weatherboards and whistled along the length of its platform.

And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth saving.

Rather, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth me giving money to save it.

This is not stinginess – I’m a soft touch for both worthy and unworthy causes. Neither is it a disregard for our heritage. There are buildings in our district I would give money and more to save.

But not the railway station - its liabilities outweigh its merits.

For a start it’s ugly. Try as I might I can see no architectural or aesthetic beauty in it. I accept that an old building should not have to be beautiful to be worth saving, but it helps. I also accept that it will look more attractive with some new cladding, unbroken windows and a coat of paint, but not much more. It will still be an old wooden shed knocked up on the cheap a hundred years ago.

And what about those hundred or so years? Don’t they make it worth saving? I’m not immune to the argument of age but, like beauty, age in itself is not sufficient argument for retention. Some buildings grow in stature with age: others diminish or simply become redundant. My house is a hundred years old and I consider it well worth saving because it is a good, hardworking building. It retains a purpose.

Sadly, the railway station does not have a purpose, which is why it has fallen so far into disrepair. It stubbornly resists the obvious functions for a building of its nature – retail, tourism or heritage chic. This is partly because it has been left high and dry as the commercial heart of town moved south, but also because it is not a building that draws people to itself. It has no vaulted ceilings or mosaic tiled floors to admire, no play of light upon stone, no intricately constructed window or colonnaded terrace, no splash of water from a fountain.

“Yes, but it has history”, its advocates cry. “It means something to us. Our sons embarked for war from this platform, lovers embraced, journeys that changed lives began and ended here.”

Now this is an argument I can just about reach into my pocket to support. The station is part of our story, it bears some of the burden of our collective memory. Except, once again, it remains a frustratingly mute witness to all that history. Standing on the platform evokes no sentiment, conjures no spirits, even for me who has been part of that history in my childhood, jogged through Ashburton in the hour before dawn on the night express from Invercargill, all steam and cinders, dashing into the buffet for a pie or an ice cream. The memory remains, but it’s not the building that calls it up.

Having a past is not sufficient argument for saving a building. It must also have a future. And here, perhaps, I lack vision. Should we save the station for a future not yet revealed? For that matter, do its supporters already possess a vision for its future that I am not aware of?

You see, I wonder how well this idea has been thought through. Let’s say we raise $400,000 to save the station from demolition. Then what? Do we raise another $400,000 to save it from collapse? Then raise some more to make it commercially viable? Or do we resign ourselves to the reality that it is not a going concern and keep raising money just to see it standing there?

Perhaps the future is in the past. In 20 years passenger trains may once more call at Ashburton. But I’m not gambling my money on it.