This pair of roll of honour boards are fixed on the outside wall of the Hillside engineering works in South Dunedin.
These polished granite boards with gold engraving record the names of 23 staff from Hillside railway workshops who died in the First World War and 25 who died in the Second World War. A large crowd gathered at the workshops for their unveiling on 31 July 1949 despite ‘cold and showery weather’. In his address to the crowd, New Zealand Railways' acting general manager, E.H. Langford, appealed for those present to not regard the tablets ‘as solely a memorial, but as a living challenge'. [1] The men who died had died should be remembered as the personification of all that was 'pure, true and honest and of good report'.
These boards replaced an existing First World War roll of honour board erected at the workshops in 1916. It is not known what became of this earlier board.
[1] Otago Daily Times, 1 August 1949
Information and images courtesy Bruce Comfort, 2010
Find out more about the people listed on this memorial on Auckland Museum's Cenotaph database