Dunedin may not have its own "bridge to nowhere".
But it does have a couple of flights of concrete steps to nowhere, created more than 120 years ago, for the city's planned but ill-fated third railway station.
An $8.6 million storage building is being built beside the museum complex, to better safeguard treasures.
An operator was using a 10-tonne mechanical digger to cut out a hole for a planned museum lift shaft this week when the outlines of an old set of concrete steps emerged from the reclaimed former harbour land.
Museum development manager Bronwyn Symes said it had been exciting to see the long-buried steps, which had been created but never used, for an early railway project.
Archaeologist Dr Angela Middleton said the "steps to nowhere" were similar to another set of steps, semi-circular in shape, which were also built for the third railway station.
These could still be seen amid foundations under the brick Burnside museum building.
"It's a good story: the mystery railway station that was never built," Dr Middleton said.
Dunedin's first railway station was a humble affair. It was on Lower High St, near the Queen Victoria statue in Queens Gardens, museum officials said.
The first railway line was from Port Chalmers to the city in 1872. A second, slightly larger wooden station was built at the edge of Rattray St in 1875.
A third, and much grander, station, to be built from stone, was planned in 1884 for the site of the later Burnside building.
Foundations and some sets of concrete steps were laid.
But, amid arguments between the government and the city council, the plans did not proceed; and a temporary third station was developed alongside the unused foundations.
The grander railway plans were eventually realised when the city's fourth railway station, the current George Troup-designed building, opened in 1906.
