increasingly infrequent, and when a flood destroyed two spans of the line's bridge over the Grey River on 21 February 1966, the Railways Department viewed repairs as unjustifiably expensive and closed the line. Blackball's station building had been destroyed by fire in 1955. Restaurants, museums and recreation The Blackball Museum of Working Class History opened in the town on 1 May 2010, in order to "celebrate the role working people have played in creating the infrastructure and wealth of a nation, [and] the part working people have played in creating society". The "Formerly the Blackball Hilton" hotel was founded in 1910 as the "Dominion Hotel", but in the 1970s renamed itself "Blackball Hilton" after the mine manager (after whom the town's main street, Hilton Street, is also named). The hotel changed its name after objections from the international hotel chain Hilton Hotels & Resorts. An annual cycle race, the Blackball Working Men's Cycling Classic, was held in the town in January for three years: 2010–12. Cyclists raced between Blackball and the nearby settlement of Atarau (Moonlight). Literature Blackball has a unique literary inheritance: for a small town, it has managed to attract more than its share of literary representations. Bill Pearson's Coal Flat (1963) is a major New Zealand novel in the dated social realist tradition. Pearson had taught in the town as a probationary teacher in 1942, and had formed a friendship with the publican's family. His book caused some consternation amongst the local people, as they tried to "spot the character" and identify who Pearson had based his characters on Pearson died in 2002. Eric Beardsley's Blackball '08 is an historical novel published in 1984. Beardsley used the historic 1908 Crib Time strike as the basis for a story that fleshed out the drama of what was a key moment in New Zealand trade union history. He published his biography Sliding down the Hypotenuse in 2011. Jeffrey Paparoa Holman wrote The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets, a collection of poetry published in 2004, which contains poems based around the railway bridge that linked the community with the outside world. The poems also mention people and features of the town, which Holman recalls from his childhood in Blackball during the 1950s and 1960s. Paul Maunder, who lives in the town, is a playwright who has written and staged a number of plays about the town and working-class history. Stevan