Plains, trains and a pretty cool spiral
Taking the train in New Zealand
You might remember from previous posts that the first time I arrived in Auckland, I came off a long plane ride. (And then panicked about my scarf in the car.) The second time I arrived in Auckland, I came off a long train ride. I really, really had wanted to travel by train as much as possible, as I thought that I am already flying for far too long this year with making the trip in the first place. Plus, I really like travelling by train. You see more of the country than when you fly, and you see different things than when you take to the roads by bus or car.
However, it turns out that taking the train is a different beast in in New Zealand than it is in Europe (or at least in Germany and the UK): firstly there are very few big cities, and while some have a local train network, there are not really that many regular train connections between the major cities. Partly this might be because people don’t really seem to commute by train here. Maybe because everything is quite far apart? So these trains don’t run a number of times a day, every day, but rather might run once a day, or go in one direction on certain days of the week, and in the other direction on others. (This might be different in peak season.)
Which is why when I casually said to my travel planner that I didn’t want to do any more flights within New Zealand, but did want to do as many train journeys as possible, this might have been the most challenging part of my brief. I had no idea, I just assumed train culture would be the same. In the end this request meant she had to do some serious re-jigging as trains weren’t scheduled to go on certain days or already sold out for the days that would have fit into my original itinerary.
I ended up ticking off the big three train journeys within five days - The Trans Alpine between Greymouth (on the West coast of the South Island) and Christchurch (on the East coast); the Coastal Pacific going up from Christchurch to Picton (which is North of the South Island at the Marlborough Sound and where the ferry goes over to Wellington); and finally the Northern Explorer connecting Wellington to Auckland on the North Island. The first two are basically half-day journeys, that also run as day trips, so you can take the train from Christchurch and come back on the same day, the Northern Explorer on the other hand is a full day as it takes ELEVEN hours…
All three of them are beautiful train rides, and they each include ‘open’ carriages, which (how can I explain this best?) have no seating and no windows. As in no glass in the window spaces - so you get a panoramic view and fresh air. This means that you can go there (stretching your legs), have a breather and maybe even take some photographs (although those carriages rattle round quite a bit and if the train is going at full clip, focusing might be a bit of a problem). If you are having nice weather, this is a lovely experience - and might be urgently needed after sitting for too long. All three also have a commentary that you can tune in to (they give you headphones), that tells you more about some of the places, their history and highlights some features. I really liked the commentary, so I spent less time in the viewing carriage than I might have otherwise, because there was no way to get the commentary there.
If I had to describe the differences between the three train routes, I would say the TransAlpine is the one with the most mountains. Here you are being towed through a long tunnel connecting Otira to Arthur’s Pass. However, the second part takes you through the Canterbury Plain, which, to be honest, becomes a bit boring. Well, it is flat. Maybe I was already a tiny bit tired of the Canterbury Plain, because I had traversed or at least flanked it by coach or car about four times before I made this train journey. The Coastal Explorer spends about a third along the coast, which I loved, and would have loved even more if I had sat at the ‘right’ window, rather than on an aisle seat over the aisle. The Northern Explorer has a bit of both - a little bit coast line around Wellington (this time I WAS sitting at the right window!), and then you get a good look at some mountains about half way through - because this route takes you straight through the middle of the country, and not necessarily where the roads are. So although it is a very long ride, it gives you the opportunity to glimpse a part of the country that is otherwise hard to see for the casual visitor. Also, and I of course didn’t know this, this seems to be the train for train nerds. There are old viaducts you go across, there are old viaducts you can see while you are going over slightly newer viaducts that have been built in parallel, and there is the Raurimu Spiral.
I had never heard of the Raurimu Spiral and when I read about it, and they then mentioned this in the commentary as one of the notable things on this journey, I imagined a public art work along the way. It is not, it is a feature of the track, and now that I have ridden through it, I understand why it is considered an engineering marvel. In order to get up to a plateau at an incline that the train could manage, the track goes into a loop and at one point a horseshoe turn, slowly chugging up (or in the direction I was travelling actually down) to the plateau, in a way that you can see parts of the track a number of times while you are travelling. It is pretty cool.
Which one was my favourite? I think the Northern Explorer has a slight edge because it is the most varied in the landscapes you traverse. I think I would want to break it up, though, maybe break the journey half-way through and do something else for a day or two until getting back on the train. But overall, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those three train journeys - there is good reason they are considered some of the most beautiful train journeys in the world!
What’s Next
I’m currently back in Auckland at a conference, and will be moving on to Hong Kong and Macao soon. Just a little stop here to break my journey home back to the UK.