The line was started in 1951, but in March 1953 it was decided to build the mill at Kawerau not Murupara, because Kawerau had cheap geothermal steam for energy and also as the climate of Murupara had winter mist and fog so was less suitable for a large town. So the branch ran via Kawerau to Murupara rather than directly from Hawkens Junction near Edgecombe. The Kawerau to Murupara section required major earthworks to limit the ruling grade against loaded log trains to 1 in 60. However the easy grades between Kawerau and the port of Mt Maunganui allow very long trains of over 2,000 tonnes. Work on the section to the mill started on 12 April 1953; the rails reached Kawerau in August and the first train arrived at Kawerau on 26 October, six months after work started. The major earthworks on the Kawerau to Murupara section were completed rapidly with heavy earthmoving machinery, then prefabricated track sections were laid at the rate of 3 km a week. The first logs were loaded at Galatea on 4 April 1955. A regular service to Murupara operated from 15 January 1957, although the line to Kawerau and Murupara was operated by the Ministry of Works until 1 July 1957. As the line ran through forest areas, diesel engines only were used on the line. Initially, the DE class were used for construction then for log trains on the still unsettled track bed; this has given the DE class an unofficial status of the first mainline diesel-electric locomotive in NZR service. From October 1963 a pair of DA class diesel locomotives were used, hauling 1,500-tonne log trains. More recently the standard train was a trio of DC class locomotives hauling a gross load of 2,400 tonnes on 53 USL bogie log wagons, with the primary motive power now being a pair of DL class locomotives. The annual tonnage of logs increased from 730,000 tons in 1960 to 1,126,000 tonnes in 1965. After the opening of the Kaimai Tunnel in 1978 the section to Kawerau from Hawkens Junction was formally incorporated into the East Coast Main Trunk designation with the line to Taneatua downgraded to branch status. The section from Kawerau to Murupara became theMurupara Branch, and then the Murupara Line from 2011.
