Drifting through some old files I found these pictures I took one typically sunny west coast August day in 2005 whilst on the Reefton shunt.....
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Jammed up between coal containers on the loading bank at Reefton.
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The digger scoops up some coal from the pile on the right...
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...and dumps it in the coal container. Not so bad loading containers, but dead flat tedious loading 30 CC wagons!! (Thats my soggy shunter on the right)
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Trucks get the conveyor treatment. Loaded wagons on the "high bank" in the background have been loaded by dump trucks under the conveyor.
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And stopped for another warrant at Tawhai south of Reefton..
From memory there was a cockup, hence the lone DBR on the shunt instead of the usual pair of DC's. My shunter and I took a car up to Reefton to get the shunt, which had been abandond by the previous crew earlier in the day, and I drove the shunt back to Greymouth.
I miss the little V8, as I grew very fond of plodding up and down the west coast with it on the shunts, running out to Rapahoe or down to Hokitika with it. 
Alas it has since been sent to join the rest of the v8's in the Auckland / Waikato region and the shunts are run by members of the borg-like DC fleet....

Good times, even if they were more often wet than not haha :-)

AH

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