Barry Brickell always wanted to be a potter and was fascinated by trains.  He got a teaching qualification, then a short-lived job in Coromandel high school, before starting life as a potter.  He bought a 60 Ha property just outside the town, largely because it had excellent sources of clay on it, and despite the fact it was a bare hillside.

He became an inventor, engineer, designer, potter, conservationist and teacher.

Since the clay he wanted was up the hill, the obvious thing was to make a railway to bring it down.  Buying railway track and bits at scrap prices from the mines in the area, he surveyed, benched the hillside, and laid a railway all the way to the top.  It took him 25 years, initially done by himself, later with many volunteers.  Not only is it the newest railway in NZ, it has been built completely without government money and with the help of volunteers.

Bricknell, now 79, doesn’t do much manual work nowadays and is mainly interested in conservation – having started and directed the planting of about 30,000 trees on the property.  The once bare hillsides are now lush bush, protected under covenant.