More New Zealand Railroad Yarns

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MORE New Zealand

Railway Yarns Graham Hutchins Illustrated by Henry Nicholas & Rodger McLaren

Grantham House New Zealand 4

By the Same Author Rugby Rabbits, 1983 The Howarth Years, 1985 Tall Half-backs, 1987 Black Magic, 1988 Hello, Goodbye, 1991 Magic Matches, 1991 One Day Wonders, 1991 Just You Wait 'Til Your Mother Gets Home, 1993 One Hundred, Not Out, 1995

First published 1995

GRANTHAM HOUSE PUBLISHING P.O.Box 17-256 Wellington 6033 New Zealand © Text 1995 Graham Hutchins All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 1 86934 049 3 Edited by Lorraine Olphert Designed by Graham Stewart Typeset by Bookprint Consultants Limited of Wellington. Printed by Kings Time Printing Press of Hong Kong in association with Bookprint Consultants Limited of Wellington

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Acknowledgments I wish to acknow ledge the assistance of those railway aficionados who were willing to part with snippets of railways history, personal observations and aspects of the raconteur's art. Especially valuable were the contributions made by my father, Doug, who not only delved to excellent effect through his personal memoirs of bygone railway days, but was also able to recall with lucidity hitherto unrecorded encounters. Raymond Quinn, a true rail enthusiast, provided much in the way of personal recollection and source material, as did Nehe Paid of Hamilton and Bruce Benefield of Te Kuiti, former station masters both, who were privy to some of the more amusing encounters. Westy Holder, Andy Kildare and Nora Tooke also provided valuable material. The Waitomo News displayed great generosity in permitting their archives to be rifled in the search for information relating to the germinal days of King Country rail development. The New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society was also generous in this regard. Graham Hutchins

Dedication This book is dedicated to my niece Heather, who has a natural love of trains, proving thereby that such a passion does reside in the family bloodlines.

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Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

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Chapter 1 Divining Rod 2 Tales of the Main Trunk 3 Shorter Tales of the Main Trunk 4 Mixed Blessings on the Mixed Goods 5 Arteries Through the Heartland 6 North to Opua 7 Suburban Sojourn 8 Sound-Track 9 In the Land of the Cow-Catcher 10 In the Land of Plenty 11 Taranaki Odyssey 12 Way Out East 13 Bedlam in the Bay 14 "When the Railway Ran Through the Middle of the Town 15 From Darkness into Light 16 Panic Stations 17 Railway Characters and Charlatans 18 Off the Beaten Track 19 Southern Ramblings 20 Rendering Assistance 21 Moon Travel, Flying and other Southern Tales 22 Identity Crisis 23 Down on the Wet Coast 24 Bottom Line

13 20 34 44 48 57 60 62 66 68 74 80 85 90 92 95 97 105 110 116 120 128 133 137

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Introduction

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hy trains? Could it have been the appeal of cars, trucks or horses that captured my imagination all those years ago? Did I have a choice? One of my first memories as a child relates to the breaking out of our quarter -acre section stockade and wandering, at age two and a bit, down the side-streets of Te Kuiti into the pit of the valley floor, through which the friendly steam dragons roared and stamped their steel wheels. Talk about squeaky wheels getting the grease! You couldn't help but notice trains — and their pulling power. At first everything was monstrous and larger than life. The Ka engines seemed to disappear into the clouds, such was their size. Certainly their smoke plumes climbed into the heavens. At first I thought clouds were made by steam engines, although when diesels were introduced into our valley, clouds still formed. I was too distracted by the fascination of railways to make that connection. The fascination of the railways captivated me — the eerie, spinetingling sight of a gaunt Ja screaming at the head of a snaking express in the depths of winter, the flare from the fire-box, like a devil's lick, winking through the line-side trees. You came to the conclusion that the apparition pulling the train was technically on fire. You could see the silhouette of the driver. You imagined his eyes, glowing like those of a bloodshot opossum, his teeth set in a perpetual snarl as his cacophonous charge buffeted you like a piece of discarded newspaper at railway crossings. The images and sounds were unforgettable, but the senses were assailed in other ways; the smells and tastes of the railway. Initially, coal smoke floated in dense clouds over the town, leaving a coating over your pie. Later, as the big Kas and Jas converted to oil, great wafts of oil smoke descended, leaving an oily smear on your hamburger. Life was changing on all fronts. Finally, as the enclosed electric engines entered proceedings, you could eat your pizza on the hoof without fear of fallout. There were other smells, like those of hot steel and seared paint, as steam engines waited vibrating and hissing at the head of the train, while

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passengers were drawn to the aroma of reheated meat pies and strong coffee in the refreshment rooms. The demise of steam was a time of temporary mourning, but the blunt presence of the new Da diesels, with their driver's cabs protruding like herniated broom cupboards, demanded their own measure of respect as they bunted through the heavy, mid-winter fog. In the very early years I didn't fancy venturing too close to the head of trains. Steam engines often seemed on the verge of disintegration, like active volcanoes on wheels that vented their steam and spleen on innocent bystanders.

It was all we could do to show our respect and interest, to view the moody monsters from the safety of the pedestrian overbridge, allowing ourselves to be smoked like mullet as the powerful exhaust from the

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funnels burst up through the gaps in the wood slats of the bridge. Eventually I plucked up courage to venture closer, and before I knew it I was travelling on the express that had seemed so overwhelming to awestruck five-year-olds. I used to tremble with fear and awe when such trains swept like massive beach breakers beyond the station platform, forcing you to abseil up the side of the carriage vestibule into the warmth of the steel cocoon of carriage B non-smoking. Once inside you settled back in your seat, a feeling of accomplishment sweeping over you. It was like conquering the steaming dragon; like riding on the dragon's back as it bucked and bellowed off into the black night. The cold of winter was driven out by the engine's own heating system, as steam and hot water from the dragon's boiler coursed through the carriage. The once-intimidating steam was now seen to be an ally. Eventually you felt completely cocooned against the elements, against eventuality and cruel fate. Outside the carriage window the engine's headlight shadowed lonely farm houses and isolated reaches, and a welling sense of invincibility replaced earlier pangs of vulnerability. Soon, boarding a train became a comforting retreat, either from the small-town tourniquet or, in later years, as a means of escape from the city; quitting the mad-headed stampedes of Auckland on a Friday evening as the regal express thundered above the hordes of city slickers doing their ant-like impressions in the streets below the elevated embankments and over -bridges. It was fight or flight. It may have been more appropriate to stay and fight the city demons, but flight on the Friday-night express was an attractive option, as we retreated from the suburbs into familiar open spaces. As life settled down, trains became more than a comforting retreat. Gradually the romance and wanderlust returned, despite the demise of steam. There were those who still looked sideways. Why trains? No one travels by train. I was overplaying the importance of railways in people's lives, and yet I couldn't deny a cornerstone of my existence. The railways ran through my early life in such a way that I would have needed to be senseless not to be affected. However, I attributed too much significance to railways, I was told. In mid-continental areas of the USA and Canada, where the wheat belts dominate and the sky gets big and lonely, there have been sincere requests by mid-westerners to have diesel engines modified - or at least

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their horns. Such was the reassurance gained from the sound of passing steam trains and their friendly whistles that when the faceless, voiceless diesels came along, people felt they had lost a friend. Could the diesel's horn be made to sound like a steam engine's whistle? Railways and trains obviously meant a lot to them; it was a life-line, both materially and emotionally. It has been suggested that with the demise of steam the appeal of railways receded. There was an undeniable summoning power inherent in steam engines for many New Zealanders. They were larger than life. The principle motive force became the best advertisement the railways ever had. When the efficient, practical diesels and electrics came along, people were not roused or aroused in the same way. Various theories suggest that the railways lost patronage because of this unexpected, almost subconscious negation, as much as they did from the refinement and encroachment of the motorcar and passenger jet. The demise of steam may have affected me in that way. If the turning away was partially sub-conscious, as some theorists suspect, I would have no real way of knowing. Certainly NZ Railways went through something of a down-time for me when the blunt, basic Da diesels

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invaded the network, and yet the wanderlust and hankering after unbeaten tracks soon returned to the surface. Up to this point my fascination with railways had been played out on a strictly north-south North Island axis — the main-trunk line, usually between Te Kuiti and Auckland, sometimes Te Kuiti and Wellington. But now I was becoming aware of other lines of the New Zealand network and the passenger services still plying the beaten track through the backblocks. I began my pilgrimage in earnest across tracks that were virgin to me. The adrenalin rush propelled by crossing uncharted territory was intoxicating, the already pleasurable sensation of train travel complemented by the sense of discovery. There were some heady journeys. And the people. The fellow passengers. They now seemed more threedimensional than in the past, as if they were coming into focus more readily. Or perhaps the camera in my head had reached that stage of maturation where it could provide a sharper definition of images. And now in the 1990s trains are running again. Real trains with real people in them, not just woebegone believers like me who failed to come to terms with the fact that railways were supposed to belong to a bygone era. Real trains with real, overseas people in them. The tourist boom has fuelled the revival of rail, just as the sheer majesty of many of our tourist train routes has attracted foreign nationalities to ride the beaten track.

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Chapter 1

Divining Rod

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he railways had always been a divining rod. Not only did the line seek out and find water— there were countless bridges over the most inconsequential of watercourses — but if you stayed with it and retained faith, it would bend you to its will and bring you safely into your station. The railways were always a source of amusement; there was something inherently funny about steam engines. Great clouds of steam were always likely to blast unexpectedly from the engines' nether regions, creating billows in pinafores and gym frocks of the gaggles of giggling schoolgirls waiting at the station. The big engines, the K and J classes, had a small valve which made a ticking sound while they waited, fuming at the platform. The valve flickered at the front of the engine like a facial tic in the temples — a neurasthenic response, an impatience to be gone, to steam into the green valleys across the grey steel viaducts. It was a considerable shock to learn that steam-train whistles were manufactured by the mere emission of pent-up steam. As a boy I had taken it for granted that the whistling sound was the train's voice, emanating from the engine's inner being, connecting by some mystical link to its steadfast thought patterns and single-minded sense of purpose. The steam-train whistles, long the call to arms of flight for the Americans of a restless era, seemed no less poignant to small-town New Zealanders. In a young country, where people were settling down and going nowhere, the steam trains seemed to stir feelings of restlessness on a narrower front. Within their quarter-acre clay compounds townsfolk busied themselves cutting vegetation back to an acceptable level. Like lapsed pioneers they hacked at the undergrowth and overhang with illconcealed relish. Steam-train whistles would be answered by the monotonous drone of a lawnmower, the sudden splutter of a chain-saw. Drones would set off counter drones as other townsfolk felt constrained to strive for the acceptable level. Nobody wanted to be seen to be out of line. Most sections in town were cosmetically trimmed. It was even suggested that Jack Hall, a town councillor, trimmed his silverbeet, such was the desire for uniformity and neatness. 13

The railway ran irrespectively through such evolution. It had been necessary in the first place to hack and pillage the native bush for the railway to progress. Having established itself the railway, like an itinerant gigolo, then spawned railw ay towns, the construction of which necessitated further wholesale clearances. Steam engines were never flagrant however. Just the manipulated bludgeons at the forefront of the railways' incursion. They were openhearted, hard-working, and they let you know that fact. The diesels, by contrast, were secretive, enclosed, corporate, propelled by magic and internal combustion. The diesels didn't need to disconnect and go for a drink. Not like the big steam engines, shuffling like blustery grandfathers — overweight patriarchs with high blood pressure. They had a considerable presence, which was never more apparent than when they reconnected with the train after having had their water tanks recharged. The sturdiness of railway crockery was severely tested at such times. The reconnection invariably reverberated throughout the train, sending scalding railway tea cascading and reinforced cups ricocheting. Rock cakes rebounded. Ham sandwiches slithered. Such tremors were seldom seen as bad planning or poor public relations on the part of the railways, just a rough-and-ready part of our heritage. Certainly no one dreamed of complaining. The K class, in particular, epitomised all that was honourable in New Zealand society: utilitarian, solid, slightly overweight perhaps, but entirely dependable. Ks were like durable All-Black forwards — big, blunt, unimpressed by deviousness. It was suggested in 1956, when the All Blacks were having front-row problems, that a couple of K locomotives should be deployed to shore up the work face of national rugby. Kevin Skinner was whistled up instead. There was a man in our street, an engine-driver called Jacobs, who drove Ks. He spoke of tolerance, respect, eventual reverence for the big engines. He had a relationship with his engines as tangible as his relationship with Peter and Colin, his flesh-and-blood sons. Perhaps more so. Peter and Colin were the terrible twins, the pre-pubescent orchardraiders who put mighty cannons in rubbish tins, who attempted to attach skyrockets to cats' tails long before it became a dreadful fad, who burned effigies of headmasters and let all their crackers off on the fifth of October.

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Meanwhile, their father was thundering through the rural night with his cargo of treasures for the Auckland end of the rainbow. Once Mr Jacobs was assigned to the goods express, to replace the regular driver who had fallen foul of the authorities. The goods express, a heavy, ominous train with long box-cars full of perishables and vitals — venous blood from the capital to save Auckland lives, strawberries for the Takapuna set — stopped for no one. Stopped at nothing. A local schoolteacher was side-swiped by the goods express at a partly concealed, controversial crossing, but the express continued hammering obliviously towards the Auckland terminus. Sometimes it seemed the heavy metal was drawn by a magnet, through the inconsequential rural towns, all the way to the rambling, swaggering Auckland yards. Trains were nonetheless the most tangible link with the outside world. We used to cluster at the station, drawn by the allure: the sophistication, the prowess, encapsulated in the sleek, red, steel carriages. Initially we used to watch the passengers at the windows, slouched, slew-eyed, as if they were a permanent fixture. At that stage we didn't see them as people passing through; we didn't even see them as people. Once there was a young boy, no older than I, who had tears running down his cheeks, behind the thick, immovable glass of the carriage window. His eyes narrowed in the harsh station lights and the tears dried. But not before we had noticed them. Someone sniggered. After all these were transients within a bulbous, steel cocoon, isolated from reality, our reality. Except when it was time for refreshments. My generation did not experience the pandemonium of war-time evacuations, air raids and panic stations. The ten-minute refreshment stop was the closest local people ever came to witnessing such disorder. And then only the ladies of Her Majesty's New Zealand Railways cafeteria staff would suffer, firsthand, at the onslaught of hungry, disorientated, smoke-scoured, scorch-throated fly-by-nighters, desperate for something wet, warm and soothing. Something to take their minds off the prospect of the hundreds of shuddering miles yet to come. Scalding pies were a diversion, with their propensity to haemorrhage in the dark. Railway cups which chipped teeth with ease were another. But the tea itself and the mince, if you could retrieve it, were honest and sustaining. As the overnight expresses reached their zenith, the refreshment stops became an essential morale and sugar-level booster. The railway-cafeteria

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ladies became a vital front line. Off in the distance a plaintive, pleading whistle would herald the incoming chaos. The cafeteria ladies would turn grim-faced, the gossip would die and a thin, green line, poised with massive, battered tin teapots, would take up station. The thin, green line was all that protected the town from the waves of Wellingtonians, foreigners, people from National Park. While the cafeteria ladies certainly developed a siege mentality, I used to hold in awe their amiable, efficient, mid-scramble composure. Every night of the week hundreds of nameless souls stormed the cafeteria, drawn like waifs to the sustenance. While small-town people slept soundly in their beds the transitory people off the express trains surged and buffeted, panicked and plundered, before the trains forged ever northwards, or south. Famous people, living legends, perfect strangers, came to our town in the depths or shallows of night, circulated fleetingly within the booming warmth of the cafeteria, retreated replete, invariably never to return. For a time, while small-town life moulded us in its crucible of blind and bland acceptance, the trains receded. They were just an encumbrance on level crossings, something which had to be borne. Without the railways the town would shrivel, we were told, although the same people continually bemoaned the choking, black smoke-drifts and steady urine drizzle from the stock wagons. In later years I began looking at the carriages of strangers in a different light. Before I had seen the passengers as immutable objects. Now it was becoming obvious that those passengers were looking back at us - and our town; possibly defining us - certainly judging us, as derailments, signal failures and tablet-exchange mishaps jumbled the schedules. Eventually the passengers became people, living beings who traced and confirmed their own itinerant identity, often on steamed-up carriage windows, and forced us to think about our town. Where were we living? What was so sacrosanct about our little town? The passengers had become living things, with worldly eyes; living things, quite apart from the metallic fixtures and designated smoking and non-smoking signs. I used to think that non-smoking meant there were no complications with carriage brake linings. No cause for friction. That was another misapprehension. Quite simply, there were people in the non-smoking cars who had chosen not to smoke cigarettes. It was a gradual growth of

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awareness — of the sophistication of the outside world, of the choices available. Malcolm Prendergast chose to smoke. You could usually pin-point his presence by a continual halo of thin, blue exhaust. He had won a Field Scholarship to America and when he returned, complete with crew cut and talk of the CIA, he was drawing regularly on Camel filters. He smoked wherever he went: the pictures, school, even at church dances, and when those venues were outlawed he smoked outside the pictures, under the school and in the church-hall toilets. It was Malcolm Prendergast, the American Field Scholar, who coerced me into train travel, not as the most efficient means of transport, but as some sort of spiritual pilgrimage into the hinterland. And, if not the heartland, then certainly into the soft underbelly-land of the rich farmers and the hardening arteries to the north. A lot of boyhood superstition was dissipated with our travels on the trains, along the steel lines, the divining rod, much misunderstood during the awkward growing years. With the dissipation came a sense of status. The Beatles of "A hard day's night" vintage set themselves, initially, on a train. "I should have known better" was performed in a guard's van. Later, with the emergence of Bob Dylan, the symbolic significance of trains was reaffirmed. Dylan sang of trains and harkened back to the golden age of Guthrie, hobos and unyielding American railroads. In New Zealand, within the choking confines of the Poro-o-tarao tunnel, we were experiencing difficulties that were less symbolic than practical. The overnight express was a congealed mass of sleepers, the carriages sweating cocoons enshrouded in steam and frost, with no one expecting intruders. Someone was occupying our seats, reserved several weeks in advance, sprawled across the aisle on the angle with heavy boots nudging the snorers in the opposite row. "This would never happen in the States," Malcolm Prendergast drawled, while driving the cold from his hands with New England gloves. After a good shaking the elongated invader of reserved seats rubbed his eyes, grunted and relented, and we took our places amidst more timorous, sleep-deprived travellers. A noisy shudder at an anonymous siding, a glancing flicker of the new-day sun, and the passengers were jolted awake. As the sun rose and refracted through the thick window-glass, babies began to squirm and

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baggy-eyed adults re-arranged crumpled bodies. The twelve-hour confinement had imposed a certain behaviour pattern, and there was an orderly procession to the toilets. Thankful for daybreak the passengers settled back, tracing the sunrise across the peat swamps, tolerating the tedious meanderings through the coal-bearing bogs, relieved at the emergence of the tawdry, southern suburbs of Auckland with their cluttered backyards of castoffs and unkempt frontages. The caustic bilge oozing from the factories. The railways remained honest and unpretentious. On the train trips south there were shared responses and beer at Taihape, a slow chugging of guitars as the train braked solemnly to cross the Whangaehu River, where Tangiwai had taken its awful toll. Half-drunk rugby teams showing theatrical respect for overnight nuns. The guard sharing a pie at Palmerston North. Territorial soldiers, plucked from a hat, bolstering one another against the unknown. Malcolm Prendergast sitting in the cold, moonlit carriage smoking Camel cigarettes. During the course of long train journeys I used to scribble down lines of poetry, song lyrics, loose, unfocused ideas, pop-art word patterns. The steady rhythm of the train set the mood and often the metre. Images of New Zealand shuddered past, providing the visual references, a shuttered, fleeting look uncluttered by personal commitment or experience. Experience would come later — abroad, in the world beyond my home town. It was voyeurism, as the train rumbled past, just beyond backyards where New Zealanders weeded their gardens, trimmed nasturtiums, cast nasty aspersions, conducted domestic disputes, often in undignified postures. Ideas floated within the confines of the subconscious, occasionally springing unheralded to the surface. I recall the train stopping at an unmarked siding, an obscure junction boasting a single, railway house and a tiny, neglected cemetery. As the train moved away, hushed words entered my consciousness. Last stop, Purgatory, We should pull in at seven. Time for a last try for glory, Change here for Heaven.

And then there was the trip home with th e train now drawn by a

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gaunt, galvanised Ja, rattling out the miles across the comfortable green plains. As the steady, syncopated clack echoed in the brain, images rose again through the refracted light. Images of impending failure, of possible success. Happiness, disillusionment. The city, the terminus, lay at the end of the line — the divining rod. Suddenly it seemed the only alternative. Our town was j ust a refreshment stop, somewhere for the engines to take on water; somewhere for the passengers to become mesmerised like opossums in the bright station lights, barely aware of the rural-serving haunt lying beyond in the shadows of night. At one time, staring into the carriages was like looking into the jukebox at McFetridge's milk bar, pining for the unavailable rock-androll 45s, contemplating our own cover version, 78 rpm wretchedness. The passengers too had seemed unavailable. The passing-through people with wide, worldly eyes. Now I was aware that I was looking out. Adapted from Tall Half -Backs.

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Chapter 2

Tales of the Main Trunk Of Yobbos and Yuppies

D

runkenness on the Auckland-Wellington express became prevalent in the final years of its service. Drunkenness also became prevalent in places where drunkenness did not normally prevail, simply because the places hadn't normally prevailed until now, places like the one-day cricket and the rock concert venues. There used to be a time when a few furtive swigs behind the station hoardings led to feelings of invincibility in youth. Now the flagrant slurping of canned beer in second-class carriages had become de rigeur. The age of the yobbo was with us, and now no self-respecting express carriage could consider itself legitimate if by, say Huntly, its aisles weren't awash with empty cans bobbing on a beery residue — at least not in the eyes of the yobbo. It was one can every five miles, or, as their generation now had it, one can every eight kilometres. Just like at the one-day cricket when yobbos' drinking figures became as significant as those of bowlers like Hadlee, Cairns and Chatfield. Four cans off eight overs, total memory loss off ten and a naked stampede across the playing pitch as the game drew to a conclusion. I don't know if streaking became a phenomenon on the Auckland — Wellington express. I usually got off at Te Awamutu or Te Kuiti, before total social deterioration set in. It was all rather sad really. No wonder people preferred to travel by car— or not go at all. The pub-crawl swill without leaving your seat. And then a decade later the yuppies came along, and much the same thing happened. Only this time the swilling was officially sanctioned and actually encouraged in the interests of the almighty dollar. The Kiwi-lager special, which took yuppies and their skis to the snow playgrounds of the central North Island, encapsulated so much drunkenness that eventually the idea was given a miss. Someone was going to die from alcohol poisoning or decapitation - or worse, run amok, starkers into the conservative hinterlands south of Taumarunui, causing total outrage and exposure of a number of kinds.

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It wasn't always like this. In pre-yuppie and -yobbo days excess was moderated to a degree. One of the most memorable, overnight trips on the old express occurred in the early 1970s when a couple of mates and I set out to visit the bright, wind-swept lights of Wellington. As state-of-the-art young bounders, we sported handle-bar moustaches of varying droop, cow-dung brown flares and metre-wide ties like Jimi Hendrix album covers. And then we decided to travel by train. Train! The idea was a knockout. Nobody travelled by train; there were hardly any left anyway. Grandmothers probably still travelled by train and mothers with snottynosed kids who used to run screaming up the aisle. But there it was. The decision had been made. We would sacrifice our symbol of ultimate freedom, a rust-ravaged Ford Cortina, and catch the overnight express to Wellington. About twenty cohorts gathered at the station to bid us bon voyage. The fact that many had never travelled by train before owed as much to the convenience and sophistication of the motor car as it did to the often poor image developed over the years by the gruff incompetence of New Zealand Railways. It was great being on a train again. The carriages hadn't changed much. The windows still didn't open — or close — depending on their state when you inherited them, however temporarily. The toilets were still like those on the sinking Titanic; toilet paper still trailed out the door into the vestibule. But the passengers were still friendly, although the guard was classic NZR gruff, wanting to know why we had dragged so much hand luggage into the carriage. "We've got a guards van for that sort of stuff," he gruffed, pointing to my rucksack which contained a toothbrush, a back-up paisley tie and 24 cans of beer. Thankfully, the guard allowed the rucksack to remain in the baggage rack. The Da diesel at the head of the train throbbed into the depths of the King Country. We settled back into our slashed seats as the sun went down over a craggy outcrop. At an isolated siding the train lurched gutwrenchingly to a stop. My rucksack tilted and rolled out of the luggage rack, falling with a terrible clunk between our feet, and beer cans began rolling out one by one from under the seats in front of us. When we went to retrieve our bounty, we found the occupants of the seats down-stream

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from the rucksack ruckus to be nuns in habit. It wouldn't do to crawl beneath those habits seeking retrieval of our pagan beer. The nuns were good-natured about it though and stayed the progress of the cans, diverting attention from us as the cans threatened to rattle through the carriage like jaffas down the gradient of the Regent Cinema floor. The carriage showed no sign of settling down for the night. Usually the reading lights above the seats would go out, as the miles built up and the inky blackness of the King Country closed in. However, this time several lights were still shining beyond Taumarunui. Our light was off of course, so much the better for quietly sipping at the cans that had so nearly got away from us. The moon rose over another craggy outcrop, and the National Park landscape in all its lonely beauty opened out. Ghostly shadows cast about in the lee of hillocks, as the express wove a pattern through the wintry landscape. Midnight came and went, and the remarkable outline of Mount Ruapehu edged into our picture. "You wouldn't see this from a car," someone whispered. At Taihape a group of guitar-toting shearers plunged into our carriage. If there had been any thought of closing down for the night it had now gone. The guitars began chunking immediately, and the distinctive fizzing of beer cans being opened filled the carriage. Gatecrashers were legitimate at this party because everyone had a ticket. The guard, seemingly oblivious to developments, wandered through like a stalking scarecrow to collect "all tickets please". "All tickets please." My mind harkened back to the days when this horrible pronouncement invaded the senses. I realise there were probably very good logistic and financial reasons for suddenly waking everyone up in the bowels of night and punching their ticket for the second time. Initially, tickets would be checked within minutes of passengers joining the train. Fair enough. But later, at an uncertain hour, the guard would make the pontifical "All tickets please" demand. It might be 3.30 in the morning, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Certainly it would be in the middle of REM sleep, with all bodily functions closed down. Everyone used to groan and scramble through handbags, sugar bags, rucksacks, back pockets, to retrieve the hallowed, half-punched ticket. The guard, a gaunt, omnipresent outline, advanced on the sleepdeprived cowerers and took great pleasure in shredding the remains of the

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puny document of admission, before thrusting the shreds back into their quivering hands. Whereupon they would thrash about for the thread of sleep unravelled before the guard knotted it with his God-awful "All tickets please" howl. Marton junction, early morning. The guitars kept playing. Aquartet of giggling, young women burst into the carriage with no intention of sleeping, having joined the train directly from a stationary party. Now they were happy to join in with a moving one. Very soon, as we roared on to the Mangaweka Viaduct and the moonglow highlighted hillocks on the move, shadows were dancing and gyrating in the aisle to the furious strumming of three guitars. Sleep for all was abandoned. Some of the nuns tapped their feet while others pretended to be asleep. The pub-crawl-on-wheels rocked through the darkness. It was party-jumping without leaving your seat. Gatecrashers were the guests. Knees began to sag, guitar-picking fingers cramped and the moon ducked behind the Manawatu escarpments. The party was winding down as the express pulled into Palmerston North, where the famous stampede to the refreshment rooms cleared the carriage, I don't know if we intended going for pies, fruit cake and scalding, muddy coffee, but the herding instinct found us under the harsh lights of the bustling cafeteria, with its third-world fixtures and arsenal of huge, battered teapots. Behind each pot a thin-lipped, opossum-eyed cafeteria attendant waited to pour a dampener on our proceedings. The tea and coffee — sometimes an eye-watering combination of both — constricted the arteries, as the train sat silent and steaming at the station with the heaters now on full. The pies burnt the roof of the mouth. The scalding coffee seared the oesophagus before turning stomachs into cauldrons of bubbling discomfort. The sun peeped through as the train pulled out. We finally fell asleep in the second of the long tunnels that make up the Tawa deviation. As the train shuddered to an ungainly stop at Wellington station, we woke with a start. Disorientation and dehydration set in.

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Main-Trunk Drunk

T

he typical main-trunk drunk was a mutant form of railway traveller who raised his ugly head on the Auckland to Wellington express in the 1950s and 60s. A hardened alcoholic with little recollection of life, he had usually spent the day drinking in a number of Auckland boozers, ending up at the Station Hotel, from where he could make a safe, late-hour lunge across the station carpark, crash on to the train and catch up on some sleep as the express gathered momentum away from the southern suburbs of Auckland.

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The main-trunk drunk usually emerged from his haze as the express hurtled towards Huntly (or thereabouts). Very soon he was lurching through the carriages seeking companionship and, if he were lucky, a fellow passenger with whom he could share a dram. As the main-trunk drunk crashed into the carriage you could tell by his gait, dress and demeanour that he was not the guard seeking "All tickets please". His eyes glowed like two setting suns. His slur rose above die general murmur of the carriage. To be pitied more than vilified, he instilled fear in the women and uneasiness in the men. Most passengers hoped he would choose someone else to harangue with his spittle-punctuated monologues and tales of woe. The good thing about the typical main-trunk drunk was he didn't dominate proceedings for long. If you paid no attention, he would usually go away. Whether he fell off the train or bunked down in the guards van, or simply alighted at a small town and went home to an everyday situation that was more normal and egalitarian than we cared to consider, he was a pathetic and passing phenomenon.

Sleeping Through

I

nsomnia was never a problem for Clarry. As an airman during the Second World War and a shift-worker of long standing, he had learnt to catnap on a sixpence. Travelling to his home in the King Country in the 1950s he initially found the late summer heat and soporific motion of the train enough to cast him into a catnap. But as the late night of the previous evening caught up with him, he was plummeted into a deep, semicomatose state. Clarry was due to alight at Otorohanga, but as the train swung into the station he was still snoring and dreaming of Sunderland flying boats in the Solomon Islands. By the time he woke from his slumbers the express was chuffing manfully up the Waitete bank beyond Te Kuiti. Clarry was mortified. His wife would kill him - for the first few days anyway. She tended to jump to conclusions, the conclusion being that Clarry had bumped into some of his old RAF buddies while on business in the Queen City and proceeded to remember the good old days without being able to remember a thing about remembrance in the morning. As the Ka ground slowly into central King Country, Clarry considered

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leaping off the train. With any luck he would land on his feet and find a friendly farmer who would drive him back to Otorohanga—on a tractor if necessary. Happily Clarry dismissed this notion as untenable, particularly when he saw the ground shelve away as the train rattled across the formidable Waitete viaduct. No point in jumping into thin air. The guard, after looking skyward, considered Clarry's options as the sleep-deprived traveller unravelled his tale. Stay with the train until Taumarunui, whereupon you can, after a bit of a wait, catch the northbound relief express which should deposit you back in Otorohanga. That was the guard's advice and Clarry went along with it — all the way to Taumarunui — although Clarry, the catnapper, had to be roused again by the guard while the express sat at the station. Taumarunui in the middle of the night is a quiet, eerie place. Clarry gulped cups of sweet railway tea, talking nineteen to the dozen to the cafeteria ladies who learned more about Sunderland flying boats and off-spin bowling in the three hours than they really wanted to. The relief express duly arrived and Clarry, through eyes that resembled those of an opossum, saw the lights of Taumarunui recede and the black vastness of the King Country close in. Thanks to the amount of sweet tea he had consumed Clarry felt primed. There was no way he would sleep through his stop this time. Besides his wife would kill him again, which was motivation enough to stay awake. The night run from Taumarunui to Te Kuiti is inherently boring and uneventful. There are no towns of any consequence and few bright lights to taunt the weary traveller. The rest of the carriage hummed with the sounds of slumbering people. As the carriage swayed Clarry could feel its soporific effect. He tried counting sheep backwards. He began intoning a mumbling version of "Lily Marlene", until fellow passengers grunted their disapproval. The affects of the sweet tea wore off as the train approached lonely Waimiha. The change in cadence, as the express thundered through the Poro-o-tarao tunnel, did nothing to prevent Clarry dropping into a troubled half-sleep punctuated by dream fragments of Japanese fighter-planes, piloted by Maude his wife, divebombing the hurtling train. As the relief express pulled out of Te Kuiti and drew away from Otorohanga, Clarry was sleeping the sleep of the damned. He woke with

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a start as the train stood at Te Awamutu. Through the window he could make out the Te in Te Awamutu, a knot of people obliterating the Awamutu portion. Most small-town stations look the same at five in the morning, and Clarry, disorientated by his deep slumber, was convinced he had woken at Te Kuiti. No sweat. Just a matter of staying bloody awake for another fourteen bloody miles until the train at last reached Otorohanga to the north. The sun came up as the train pulled into Frankton Junction and Clarry, feeling like death, joined the herded hordes as they made their way to the refreshment rooms. It was time for more sweet tea and recriminations. He was beginning to wonder if he would ever make it home.

Late on Time - Travelling on the Test-Match Special

I

t is 4.30am and 1956, although not necessarily in that order. At least that's the way I remember it. The alarm clock sounds like a thousand chain-saws as I jackknife out of bed, barking my shins on the open wardrobe door. Slowly it dawns on me why I have beaten the sun up. My father and I are off to Eden Park today, aboard the Taumarunui to Auckland special, to watch the All Blacks thrash the Springboks. Overnight tension has been such that every time a steam-train whistle blasted down in the valley I would sit bolt upright in bed and check the clock. Normally, Te Kuiti's nights were visited by scores of whistling, grunting, hammering steam trains and usually you would sleep on, oblivious to the nocturnal monsters cutting through the misty hinter land. Mind you, there used to be nights when I forced myself to stay awake, to listen out for the thrilling shrill of the engine whistles and the harsh chuffing sounds as heavy goods trains climbed the Waitete hill and disappeared into the deepest recesses of the King Country. The Ks and the Kas, the usual patrons of the line, sounded bossy. No-nonsense. The Abs shunting in the yard made a call that seemed subservient by comparison. Occasionally you would hear a higher-pitched, other worldly howl as the occasional Ja scampered through — a gaunt stallion to the Ka's beefy, robust presence. The night of the test-match special has been especially restless, and

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engine whistles echo in my head as I stumble around in my darkened room. My father, an early-rising baker, is quite at home with pre-dawn entries into the world of half-light. He is already half-way out the front door, as I continue to have difficulty focusing on the task in hand. As I have trouble focusing, full-stop. Finally, at 4.45am, we have taken to our scrapers. Despite the pre-dawn gloom and aching shins, the occasion is looming as a day of days. My twin passions — rugby and railways — await to be satisfied in a joint venture that will surely make for heady memories. Our heels echo eerily on the wet pavement as we set our sights on the local railway station. The mournful moan (is that a Ka or a Ja?) of the approaching test-match special prompts us to break into an urgent sprint, quite as dramatic as Ron Jarden's at Carisbrook in the first test of the series. It is no contest; we beat the train to the station by 20 minutes. Te Kuiti station is swarming with rugby fans, most of whom are swathed in trench coats, swandris, balaclavas and chunky, loud-coloured scarves. Some hover like multi-layered moths, mesmerised by the harsh station lights. They hardly seem to be breathing. Others are technically still asleep although they go through the motions of making ready. One weary-looking soul in the cafeteria places two teaspoonfuls of tea into the sugar bowl and stirs vacantly, sending sugar cascading over the formica. Other patrons, barely able to conceal their excitement, jump around exhaling strenuously like hot sheep during the summer muster. The more foolhardy tipple furtively on obviously-camouflaged flasks of rum or whisky or both. The nearby pie-cart does a brisk trade in scalding coffee and reheated, Tuesday's pies, which line the stomach with a vengeance. For many it will be the only thing that saves them from oblivion. The Te Kuiti railway yard is yawning and stretching: an old Ab is being fired up in the shed and the signal-box attendant rubs his eyes before staring languidly down the track. The test-match special is due in at 5.15 but, for some reason known only to themselves, the authorities halt the train for twenty minutes at a little-known siding a mile short of the town. (Back in those stoical days trains always ran but were invariably late. Perhaps that's why the test-match special was held up for apparently obscure reasons. Because so many people had come to expect trains in general to be late, they may have missed the special if it had arrived at its designated time.)

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A Ka-hauled, south-bound goods train rumbles into the yard on line two. Several rugby fans, essentially those with no sense of direction, make a foolish, stumbling attempt to board the goods. Heading south in an empty, mucky cattle-wagon doesn't strike them as a strange way to see a test match at Eden Park, until the station master with a testy gesture herds them back onto the platform. Finally Ka 947 eases the test-match special into the station, fuming and hissing like a grumpy grandfather with a heavy load and a long way to go. Despite the fact that dawn has yet to break, every carriage is fully illuminated and the train fairly vibrates with expectation. It seems as though the entire population of Taumarunui, not to mention that of Mangapehi, is on board. A couple of my father's mates, who were to be our travelling companions, appear to have slept through their alarms. There is no sign of them as the guard blows his whistle. However, just as the train begins moving, they sprint out of the fog and make a successful dive for the door of carriage "E Non-Smoking". With their duffel bags twirling like maces they crash through the congested vestibule before collapsing into the seats next to us. "What kept you?" Dad asks after their wheezing and grunting has eased. "Bloody Railways," one says. "This train usually leaves at twenty past. They can't even be late on time!" Dad says nothing, realising their story won't stand up to close scrutiny. As a one-off special "this train" didn't usually run at all. Dad's mates eventually regain their usual good humour and soon are discussing the All Blacks' prospects as the test-match special roars through the slumbering King Country. Just as we hit what seems to be a reasonable head of steam, the train decelerates and stops with a convulsive lurch at a desolate, obscure siding. Obscure it may be but there are still at least twenty, hardy, rugby fans waiting to board the train. "That's bloody Kio Kio United," one of Dad's mates whispers through clenched teeth. "Don't tell me we have to share a carriage with those buggers." Arch-rivals from Kio Kio United reel into our carriage, but after the first few miles of glares and counter-glares barriers are broken, as every passenger, regardless of club affiliation, realises that something bigger is unifying them to a common cause. The All Blacks are playing today, and

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petty rivalries fly out the window like discarded pie wrappings. The beer helps of course. (Back in those days canned beer had yet to come along and the old quart bottle still held pride of place — at a price. Such are the relative physical properties of glass and tooth enamel that when they come into sudden contact, for example when trying to drink on a train, the enamel is more likely to lose the duel. Drinking beer from a bottle and travelling by train were often an unhappy combination, as many gummy old-timers will tell you.) As the test-match special shudders through the late Waikato morning and early South Auckland afternoon, guitars chunk, bottles clink, teeth chip and rugby fans variously cheer and sing. The Ka tugs manfully at the head of the train. The Kevin Skinner of New Zealand Railways' motive power will not let us down, although one suspects that a Ja — the Ron Jarden of the fleet — would get us to the line, down the line, just as well. As the merry chortling fades momentarily in carriage "E Non-Smoking", the mesmeric clatter of steel wheels on steel tracks draws my attention to the "Non-Smoking" sign on the window. When I first encountered the term "Non-Smoking" on carriage windows, I thought the notice was for the benefit of French tourists. After all, "non" is a French word. "No Smoking" struck me as being more appropriate to the New Zealand experience. Certainly the term "Non-Smoking" is not taken as a disincentive on this trip. Woodbines, rollyour-owns and tailor-mades abound, along with a brace of briar pipes that emit an odour not unlike singed horsehair. The merriment reasserts itself, as we reach the southern suburbs of Auckland and the bungalows thicken beyond the track. It is almost an anticlimax when the train finally draws into Auckland station. Still, this is it — the Big Smoke. Test-match city. The train disgorges its cheery cargo as a cold wind gets up. Hip flasks re-emerge as a concession to the elements, and the noisy throng heads in the general direction of Eden Park. Ka 947, wasting no time, disengages from the test-match special and clanks away for a well-earned rest. There was a time when you could catch a test-match train all the way to Sandringham, directly adjacent to Eden Park. This service may still have been available, but we choose to catch a bus from outside the station. Most of us would make it to Eden Park, others wouldn't be so fortunate.

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Some wouldn't make it past the station. Others wouldn't make it past the Station Hotel... Test-match specials used to run both ways. They not only transported you to a test match, they also took you home. It was a cunningly-simple, but a highly-effective ploy by the Railways. Itis 5.30pm, still 1956 and theAllBlacks have beaten the Springboks 11-5. It has been a great day. For many it still is. Rugby fans straggle back to the station to catch the homeward-bound, test-match special. Some are still in a state of euphoria, others appear to be all-in and washed out. My father, in a state of panic, somehow has to convince his mates that if we don't make our retreat from the Station Hotel now, we run the serious risk of being stranded in the Queen City for the night. "One more for the road," Dad's mates parrot. Ye Gods, we had that one about an hour ago. "You worry too much Doug," Dad's mates assure him. "Anyway, it's your shout." They have Dad on a technicality and, as he slaps his last half-crown resignedly on the bar, it seems inevitable that we will be dossing down in the domain for the night. I should have known better. Although we don't leave the pub until 5.45 the homeward-bound, test-match special doesn't graunch out of the station until 6.30, three-quarters of an hour late. Nobody seems to mind though. The heady memory of the All Black's conclusive victory serves to alleviate most rugby fans' fatigue, frost-bite and hunger. As the train pulls out, revivers are uncorked and a series of toasts proposed and accepted. Consequently, the first leg of the homeward trip is an exercise in bladder control as milling queues edge almost imperceptibly towards the toilets. Hunger has become an increasing irritation too, and as the train prepares to stop at Frankton Junction for refreshments just about everyone is poised to strike. Most passengers have the good sense to wait until the train has come to a halt, not like the foolhardy bloke — one of the Kio Kio contingent — who jumps off the train while it is still coasting at a useful clip along the platform and runs smack into a roof rampart. That is bad enough but he has the added misfortune to be trampled underfoot by the ravenous hordes behind him, who couldn't stop even if they wanted to. A few swigs of scalding tea serve to energise a lot of fans, and soon a

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group has set up a re-enactment of Peter Jones' spectacular try. A Railways rock cake serves as the ball. The signal gantry at the end of the platform doubles as the goalposts. The passenger pretending to be Peter Jones runs out of platform, nosedives over a bit of an embankment and is only just recovered in time. Meanwhile, one of his mates has taken possession of the rock cake and is replicating one of Don Clarke's fiftymetre touch-finders. The rock cake knocks a porter's hat off before punching a hole in the ladies-waiting-room window. Getting back on the train is something of an ordeal. A knot of piemunching diehards have constructed a scrum in the vestibule, and it isn't the easiest thing in the world negotiating such an obstacle with a heavy cup of tea in one hand, a haemorrhaging mince pie in the other and a rock cake between your teeth. I am about to congratulate myself on having made it back to my seat without discharging my cargo when the engine, which has been disconnected to take on water, suddenly rejoins the train with all the grace of a wounded rhino. Hot tea rains down on a mercifully-vacant seat and my pie plops like a fresh cow -pat in the middle of the aisle. As the train continues southward, passenger numbers thin out. By the time we alight there seem to be fewer than we can recall being on the

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morning train. Our suspicions are confirmed when we learn some days later that several fans went to ground somewhere between Te Kuiti and Papakura. One of the furtive tipplers, who was nipping at his hip-flask before the morning train had even left Te Kuiti, is a case in point. Although revived at Auckland Station he stumbled from one platform to another and caught what he figured was a feeder service to Eden Park. The "feeder" was in fact a southern suburban service, and at the precise moment when Peter Jones touched down for his try the tippler was found sleeping it off in the general waiting-room at Papatoetoe station. Then there was the straggler who boarded the train at Otorohanga in a comatose state and subsequently went to ground in the Mercer swamp, while the train was waiting for the signals to change. "Who won?" were his first faltering words to a track-maintenance gang, who recoiled as the mud-caked, reed-bejewelled apparition approached them later in the day. Such reports were sobering. After all, there but for fortune may have gone any of the merry throng in "E Non-Smoking". They reckon the Orient Express had its moments of intrigue, mystery and ghoulishness. The test-match specials made the Orient Express look like a picnic excursion for pensioners.

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Chapter 3

Shorter Tales of the Main Trunk Tiger by the Tail

T

rain-chasing developed into a fad as the motor car became more freely available to New Zealanders in the 1950s and 1960s. It was an agreeable experience motoring a pace along roads running adjacent to the railway, in mock pursuit of a speeding express.

Conglomerations of males used to make a habit of taking on the sleek trains in their clapped-out rust-buckets. Some groups actually programmed trainchasing around their Friday-night hoon activities. Often the only concrete plans they did make were to backtrack to a point where

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the railway line bisected proceedings. Beer was left unfinished in obscure pubs, "birds" were abandoned half-chatted-up in dimly-lit alcoves. The call of the train, usually steam-propelled, was too much to resist. What were they going to do with the train when they caught up with it? Take it home and put it in their bedrooms, already cluttered with uplifted railway speed-restriction signs and refreshment-room hoardings? Rather like the dog who chased the car and, having caught it, took it home and buried it in the garden. What they were chasing God only knows. Certainly there was the prospect of a pretty face or two smiling down from the incubated cocoon of the steel carriage — the big-smoke "sheilas", untouchable, unattainable. Would they be impressed by these country hicks leering up at them from the lowliness of their souped-up Consuls? Would the double-declutching, four-wheel drifts and shingle sprays be an enduring memory to take back to the suburbs of Auckland and Wellington? Not that it was just hormonal hoons who indulged in train-chasing. My father, on a nothing-doing sort of late-summer evening, used to bundle us into his old Citroen as the seven-thirty express heralded its presence with a long whoop. By the time we arrived at the station the train was due to depart, the engine having been watered and the passengers tea-and-coffeed. As the express, usually Ka-hauled, hammered out its rhythm up the Waitete bank Dad would slow down sympathetically, and we could see the rows of humanity inside the carriages, like a small town in its own right, encapsulated, running through our own small town. After a few runs Dad had things down to a fine art, and we would arrive at the Puketutu overbridge in time to see the express pass beneath us as it completed the climb up to the plateau leading to the Waitete viaduct. The express then disappeared from view as we gathered a bit of unsympathetic speed. The mission now was to beat the express to the Waitete viaduct where about a million tons of steel and humanity roared out on to the imposing, steel structure. On an earlier occasion we experienced the mortification of missing the train. It passed over the sacred viaduct about a minute before we arrived. I remember how disappointed we children — and Dad — were, as we motored quietly back down the valley. However, Dad now had his timing right, and as we got out of the car

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and looked up at the awesome girders, gaunt against the dusky skyline, we could hear the roar of the approaching express. What a sight it made. In the gathering gloom the Ka looked like something out of hell — a means of propulsion that was, in fact, on fire. The flickering glow from the fire box was directly above us, and my younger sister panicked a bit at the thought, not so much of a million tons of steel and humanity falling on us, but of a heap of fiery residue. And then came the string of fully-illuminated carriages, with the setting sun dancing off the glass and smooth steel. It was like a string of pearls strung tightly across a bony neck of the woods. In later years, while travelling on the Overlander, it was interesting to note that the phenomenon of train-chasing was still in vogue. This time the train was stretching out along the edge of the Manawatu Plains, just beyond the obscure Greatford station. (What's so great about Greatford?) Greatford, in the unfortunate way of 1990s New Zealand Rail, was now just a soulless, concrete-block shed, ostensibly white but totally tattooed with bizarre graffiti and strange, Aztec symbols. The attraction for train-chasers, like moths to a flame (only the engines didn't have flames any more), survived. At a level crossing young kids looked up at the passing Overlander with a look of sheer delight on their faces. It may have been their first train. They may have seen trains on television or in books and now here was the real thing high above the road. (It wouldn't seem so high to them twenty years from now, but right now it was Thomas the Tank Engine and Desmond the Diesel for real.) And then came the train-chasers of greater Greatford. Four leering hoons in a clapped-out Cortina kept good pace with the Overlander on a parallel, sealed road angling away from the main south highway. Four leering hoons who took me back thirty years. The same look of invincibility in their eyes, the same eyes seeking out the pretty faces from the Big Smoke; only now the Big Smoke was really big — London, Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo. Half the passengers were now tourists. From the train we were privy to a piece of information that the trainchasers of Greatford had overlooked. The road they were careering down was suddenly a no-exit road. The hoons missed the warning and certainly showed no sign of slackening pace. The no-exit road ended in a disused fertiliser dump and, as the Overlander pulled effortlessly away from the scene of ultimate humiliation, the train chasers swerved into a stock-pile

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of residue, sending up a cloud of dust that threatened to blot out the setting sun. The train-chasers of today—certainly those of Greatford — didn' t have the panache or finesse of earlier generations.

The Russians Aren't Coming

W

hen the main trunk was being constructed from Frankton to Te Awamutu it took hundreds of construction workers all of three years to finish the link. One of the problems was national paranoia about possible Russian naval aggression. All large coastal settlements were heavily fortified against the invaders who never were, and at one stage the gangs working on the Frankton-Te Awamutu line were whisked away, in the interests of national safety, to help whip up gun battlements at Devonport. A more niggling and immediate cause for delay was the "hungry hole" in the swamp on the outskirts of Ohaupo. A seemingly-bottomless pit swallowed more than a hundred tons of ballast, and while the navvies and construction crews did their best to find solid ground, progress schedules were rendered redundant. By the time the line inched its way into Ohaupo the delays had become so embarrassing to the authorities that the new connection was opened without the usual fanfare and blast of brass bands and overimbibing of fermented substances. In retrospect the Russian paranoia might have been turned to some national advantage, had a few Russian frigates drifted into our seaports. The frigates could have been used to fill up the hole in the Rukuhia Swamp.

Taumarunui - Time For A Puff

T

imes change — and regulations. Smoking is not permitted on many of the newer services offered by New Zealand Rail. It is an altogether more environmentally-friendly means of transporting people from point A to point B - or to Point Elizabeth, if you are down that way sometime.

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The Overlander, the new service plying the old route of the AucklandWellington daylight express, has a no-smoking restriction. One day a number of travellers, who were obviously hardened smokers, had had no opportunity to get a fix or two within the confines of the train. The smokers conspired a while and figured they could leap out on to the platform and light up each time the Overlander stopped at a station. And it did stop: Papakura, Pukekohe, Huntly, Frankton, Te Awamutu, Otorohanga, Te Ku iti... However, the put-down and pick-up time was now so dramatically brief that no sooner had you set foot on the platform and put fag to quivering lips than the train began ghosting down the line again. The steward continued to remind passengers that unless alighting, detraining, disembarking (or disembowelling, as one garbled announce-

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ment seemed to have it), they should stay on the train at all times. The smokers became edgy. They drank a lot of complimentary coffee. Meanwhile, by the time the train pulled into Taumarunui such good time had been made that the Overlander was running ten minutes early. And the smokers were in advanced craving mode. "Not like the old days," chortled all those who could remember the lateness of trains. "So what?" mumbled all those who smoked. In an act of great kindness the steward announced that the train would be stopping at Taumarunui for five minutes and passengers might like to stretch their legs and lungs. You would have thought the train was about to be time-bombed. The smokers, their tailor-mades at the ready, stampeded for the door and, in the clear, still, Taumarunui air, lit up like kids on the fifth of November. It was amazing how fast some of them ignited, with one inhaling his first puff before his feet even hit the platform. The kindly hostess had prepared smokers for the announcement — an announcement that was, in effect, for a smoke stop. Twenty or thirty souls, ranging right across the age, gender and socioeconomic spectrum, clustered together and smoked up a storm. If you had been viewing Taumarunui station from the rear you would have sworn that steam had returned, such was the density of the exhaust expelled by the grateful smokers. Solo mums and brief-cased executives contributed generously to the cloud of smoke rising slowly above the station, but two elderly, bearded gentlemen made the most distinctive offering as their topped-up briar pipes gave off a pungent pall that looked for all the world like coal smoke. It was a nostalgic moment. Smoke, if not steam, had returned to Taumarunui.

Export Ragwort

A

local wit was sitting next to a Japanese tourist as the

Overlander wended its way down from the central plateau of the North Island. A field of scotch thistles in full flower provided an eye-catching, if puzzling, display for the man from Japan. "Ah what, prease?" the tourist asked .

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"Thistles for export," the humorist revealed. "Ah — export", the Japanese nodded sagely. He had certainly heard of that word. Further down the line thousands of yellow ragwort flowers waved in the wind. "What so, prease?" the tourist appealed. "Export ragwort," was the answer. "Ah, export." He nodded even more sagely. The North Island main-trunk wit gurgled into his can of Fosters, seemingly unaware of the fact that he was drinking imported beer — and Australian at that. "Ah. Ragwort for the making of rags, yes." The Japanese tourist wanted to learn as much as he could about New Zealand. "No. For the curing of warts, mate." He nearly choked on his Fosters. As the Overlander approached the market-garden regions of Ohakune, fields of squash presented a distinctively-green canopy. "Export squash," our funny fellow announced seriously. (Had he just discovered he had actually drunk a can of Aussie beer?) The Japanese laughed boisterously, shaking his head. "No, not export." "Why not mate?" The wit was on the verge of looking hurt. "Not arrowed. No export if crops damage, no." His companion looked perplexed. "Export crop squashed. No good," the tourist explained. Our humorist returned to the servery for another can of Fosters.

"The Last Cuppa"

W

hen the refreshment room at Taumarunui station was closed in 1975 the occasion was marked by the attendance of all passengers off the Auckland to Wellington express, who, along with one hundred local residents, celebrated the passing of a unique phase in New Zealand rail history by singing "Now is the hour". They also demolished an unspecified number of pies and a gross tonnage of fruit cake. Like other refreshment rooms on the NZ Railways network, the Taumarunui watering-hole had been privy to thousands of heart-felt farewells, as sons and husbands serving in the Second World War huddled and cuddled in the bustling warmth before departing. Many of

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course didn't return. The refreshment room was also a hang-out or drop-in centre in the days before the milk bar, with its tinkling juke-box, summoned celebrants. Back then the would-be Clark Gables and Betty Grables would gather to compare notes, lick wounds and embellish half-truths. At one time the refreshment room was lauded, by someone writing in a local publication, for giving rise to a significant number of betrothals between interested parties. Unfortunately a slip of the pen or printing-press announced that there had been "many brothels in the refreshment room", which caused discomfort in some quarters although hardened railway-types gained much humorous mileage out of the gaffe.

Lean On Me

T

he refreshments stop at Mercer, some sixty kilometres south of Auckland, was one of the most disorienting on the North Island main trunk. They say the Mercer refreshment rooms rocked and rolled more violently than the old mixed-goods. A very old station, it had been established in the days when Mercer was the railhead on the line from Auckland. Back then passengers continued their journey south by paddlesteamer on the Waikato River, thus being able to continue as far as Cambridge. It wasn't just the age and considerable size of the station that accounted for its instability; the peat swamp on whic h it had been built was always going to ensure a certain unsteadiness. Luckily the lean on the structure was towards the tracks, which meant that passengers were always tilted in the right direction when it came time to rejoin the train. Sometimes the boggy aspect of its setting made the Mercer platform look as though it were moored to the hinterland. It was also said that the swampy surrounds gave rise to a water supply that rendered the refreshment-room tea muddy and unstrained. Had the old building been left to its own devices it may have given one final lurch towards the track, rising proudly but momentarily before disappearing without trace into the murky depths of the swamp and taking several hundred refreshment-room occupants with it. However, this scenario was not played out as the old Mercer station was demolished in the 1960s.

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Oh to Be in Oio

T

he hamlet of Oio, located half-way between Taumarunui and National Park, can cause problems with its name, although they are not serious ones. "Would you believe it? This is station 0-1-0," announced an American tourist as the Overlander pulled into the tiny, North Island station. "They can't even give the station a god-damned name. Just a number," the tourist continued, while locals smirked out the window. The situation reminded me of the time my Australian niece, on reading the name Kio Kio, thought it read K-10, K-10 (which made it K-20 anyway). She thought there may have been a yacht located in the vicinity — a more sophisticated version of K-7 perhaps?

Once Bitten

C

ould it ever happen again? The trauma of Tangiwai, New Zealand's worst rail disaster, became part of the psyche of every New Zealander who was alive at the time or who subsequently learned of the freakish tragedy. In April 1975 volcanic activity on Mt Ruapehu brought memories of the disaster to the surface again. All eyes turned to the volcanic plateau, that part of the central North Island traversed by the main-trunk line. Initially it had been Mt Ngauruhoe venting its volcanic spleen. However, the subsequent bubbling at Ruapehu had the authorities concerned. Massive deposits of rock and ash were swept down several rivers radiating out from the volcano, and all trains were held at various stations until mother nature had run its course. As the situation stabilised, trains were permitted to proceed at a reduced speed along the affected track between Waiouru and National Park. All eyes turned of course to the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai, where the river rose dramatically, setting off the warning alarm at Ohakune Train Control — the warning alarm that had been installed following 1953's Tangiwai disaster. As thoughts drifted back to that dreadful Christmas Eve, all trains were put on hold until the "all clear" signal was given.

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Lying at Ease

T

he first through-passenger service from Auckland to Wellington took place on 14 February 1909. The proposed timetable featured an 8.30pm departure from Auckland and a 4.30pm arrival at Wellington the next day. Advertising for the new service announced that sleeping cars would be available at 10 shillings for lying at ease. Second-class charges were 21 shillings and twopence, with first class 30 shillings and one penny. The sleeper charges — lying at ease — were additional.

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Chapter 4

The MGs of Rail Mixed Blessings on the Mixed Goods

T

he mixed goods used to pull out of Te Kuiti station at about ten on a Saturday morning, bound for Taumarunui and gory stories of pimply adolescence. Dank and dusky retreats dominated our lives: the Regent Cinema, the storeroom at the back of the science lab, the old carriage on the Te Kuiti-Taumarunui mixed goods of the early 1960s. Adolescents like us were drawn to such sub-cultural cesspools where some of the less formal aspects of our education took place.

Before too long, as the mixed goods rattled up the Waitete bank, Malcolm Stoddard was spittingout the window at Bruce Bryant, who was feeling the rush of wind in his crimped locks. Bruce Bryant, a doctor's son and never one to be intimidated by the leering sons of merchants, spat back into the wind. His blob of expectorant curled back in his face, much

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to the mirth of the dozen or so passengers in the ancient, dimly-lit carriage. The guard had one leg shorter than the other, although this anatomical detail was disguised at times in his chosen profession. Such an oddity served him well when the carriage listed to the left (although when it listed to the right he was more disadvantaged than a guard with legs of equal length). There were days when he left us well alone. As the train creaked across the connections at Taumarunui he might skip through the carriage with a half-hearted "All tickets please" but, apart from that, his presence was low-key. He may have felt intimidated by some of us, certainly by Tommy Murdoch, a boisterous fifteen-stoner who had been dropped from the first fifteen for making improper suggestions to the sandwich lady at an after-match function. Murdoch used to bring his dog, a cross-eyed bitser that slobbered when the train got over 20 mph. The guard was relieved upon a couple of times when he stood stock still to punch holes in our tickets. Perhaps that was why he gave us a wide berth, not so much intimidated by Murdoch's burly presence as his slobbering, widdling dog, who really wasn't allowed on board anyway. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning. Grinding, screeching through the deepest King Country, travelling beyond curfews and chaperones, smoking cheroots and Brent Smith's American import Camel filters, as the mixed goods transported us from the boredom of our own small town to that of another. The mixed goods, now Da dieselhauled, stopped everywhere, crossed everything. At Mangapehi the shunt ing of timber wagons from Ellis and Burnard's steam-driven sawmill took so long that occasionally we would slip away into the licensed club in a crazy attempt to purchase a forbidden, frozen beer. It was a tough town, an unforgiving area. Bennydale, beneath which stretched the labyrinthine, state coalmine, lay a couple of miles down the road. The coal was trucked to the railhead at Mangapehi,

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and some of the characters who can only emerge from a coal town made it into the Mangapehi Club too. We thought we were men when we entered the Mangapehi Club and ordered several jugs, as hardened boozers snorted derision. Just to see what we'd do with them the barman gave us a jug each. After a few swigs we were struggling. On one such occasion the shunting of the mixed goods was cut unexpectedly short, and the train was set to depart. "You can't leave before you drink those," the barman sneered, pointing to our nibbled-at jugs. As eyes watered and faces flushed, we did our best to drain the jugs. Long before we had finished the mixed goods was moving with some urgency out of earshot. We had to wait four hours at Mangapehi station for the next train.

More Mixed Blessings on the Mixed Goods

S

ome people called the mixed goods the "goods with car" service. We called the mixed goods the MG, although it was somewhat less racy than the sportcars of the same name. But we cut a dash on the mixed goods — or liked to think we did. Noeline Sutton was one of my first girlfriends. I met her on the mixed, or rather I met up with her on the mixed. She was in form four when I was in form five. I kissed her in the Poro-o-tarao Tunnel. Quite a bit happened beyond the Poro-o-tarao portals. Several relationships were cemented. It was an important tunnel although the authorities declared it to be a real menace as it was too narrow and parts of the wall were collapsing. Someone thought that subterranean springs seeped through its roof and made the line a greasy obstacle, that one day it would cave in. With our luck it would collapse on us. I guess we used that as an excuse to live for the moment, as the mixed goods roared through the wasted chambers of the Poro-o-tarao, like an angioplasty balloon up an occluded artery. We could all die so why not make the most of the moment? Kiss a girl. Experiment a bit. Swig furtively from Tommy Murdoch's "juicy orange" bottle, spiked with creme de menthe. Like our fathers before us we could well be returning to the front, with the prospect of being buried alive in some rat-infested trench in the Dardenelles — or the crumbling Poro-o-tarao tunnel. So why not go over the top and lose yourself in one last, golden reign of passion?

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Murdoch's dog used to howl horribly in the tunnel, and yet after a few hundred metres its unearthly utterances seemed to be sucked up by the incredible roar of the train, as its cadence became condensed in the clammy bowels of the Poro-o-tarao hill. In retrospect the tunnel was a dark, dank, smoke-filled den of iniquity, a black netherworld where imagination soared and harsh reality hit you between the eyes. Like the time Tommy Murdoch threw a cream bun at Bruce Bryant.

Tight Squeeze

T

hat the Poro-o-tarao tunnel needed modification was never seriously challenged. The entire hillside through which the tunnel was gouged seemed to be on the move, so much so that engine drivers were advised to retract their tablet exchangers in case they sheared off. That's how tight a squeeze it was becoming.

Meeting on the Mixed

R

ailway carriages served a number of purposes in earlier times. Members of the Otorohanga Rugby Club once convened a fullyfledged committee meeting in the carriage of the mixed goods while travelling back from a game at Te Kuiti. It wasn't just the convenience and immediacy of the setting that prompted such a move: at the time the club didn't have their own clubrooms in which to convene a meeting anyway.

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Chapter 5

Arteries Through the Heartland Throw Tablets from the Train

T

he tablet used to be a vital piece of equipment in the safe running of the railways. Possession of the tablet enabled any given train to proceed along that section of line covered by a particular tablet. Without the tablet the train could not proceed. The tablet exchanger used to be a preelectronic piece of sleight-of-hand whereby the tablet for the previous section of track was exchanged by the train entering a new section — and the new tablet for the next section of track uplifted. When I was a kid I thought the tablet exchanger was a means whereby a sick train driver, who had foolishly taken the wrong medication with him on the train, could change it for the right stuff at the next station. Or if the flu-ridden fireman needed something stronger, the tablet exchanger on the station would facilitate this upstrengthening of the dosage. At the time it seemed an extremely caring attitude adopted by the railways towards its train drivers. Without thinking too deeply about it I imagined that medicine for respiratory problems (smoke inhalation), first degree burns (all these hot engine surfaces), travel sickness, heavy colds (there were a lot of draughts on steam engines) and, if what my Uncle Allan said was anything to go by, hangover cure (particularly on those lonely branch lines) would be amongst the most commonly-used medications and tablets stocked by the somewhat gruesome-looking tablet exchanger.

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In days gone further by the fireman on the passing train and the station master on the platform used to exchange the tablet using a caneloop affair that looked like a flattened fruit basket. Was it a remnant from a derailed picnic train? At that stage, as the fireman and station master made their mid-air transference, I thought the fireman had forgotten his lunch and that the man on the platform, with more control over these matters than the fireman who was obviously miles from home, was transferring a cut lunch to the grateful fireman or driver, with the train not even having to stop. At the age of seven that too seemed like a nice thing for the railways to do. As innocence gave way to truculence, the tablet exchanger seemed like a pretty savage contraption, particularly when activated on the station by a passing train. The sharp, spear-like armature would snap back and swing around to absorb the force. It paid to stand back a little from that particular machination, if you didn't want to lose an eye, get yourself run through or disembowelled in public. In Britain they used to have a system whereby mailbags were dumped from passing trains into a waiting net, while at the same time stationary ones on the station were scooped up by another net secured to the passing trains. The thought was expressed, not very loudly it must be admitted, that passengers could be uplifted and put down in similar fashion without having to stop the train. Running times would certainly be reduced although dishevelled passengers might feel a bit put out. These days of course the adrenalin junkies of the x-generation may find such a rough-and-ready manhandling (person-handling?) on and off trains as big a rush as bungy-jumping. In our day consideration was given to disembarking the infuriating Ross Sorenson, a real pain in the train, straight on to the tablet exchanger, where he would be impaled and snared for all the world to see — just like a recalcitrant in the public stocks in older times again, an object of public ridicule as people were made aware of his bullying tactics. Things like getting you in a headlock in the Poro-o-tarao tunnel, putting pies on your seat and making you walk the plank virtually right off the carriage-way — an extremely dangerous move that once or twice had you dangling from the arm rail and your feet scraping the ballast. At times like that, when nine-year-old boys will be boys, you were grateful for the fact that the Te Kuiti-Taumarunui mixed goods hardly ever got above 30 mph.

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And once you became aware of the real function of the tablet exchanger — how it guaranteed safe passage through any given section of line — you were grateful to the railways for doing their bit in making train travel as safe as possible.

Troubled Waters

A

triple-headed freight train was thundering north of Te Kuiti, when it became apparent to bystanders that the third engine was on fire. Eventually a radio message was relayed to the driver who promptly threw out all anchors. The train rumbled to a stop by the Te Kuiti oxidation ponds, and a suggestion was made that the less-than-pristine waters be pumped on to the fire. However, the Te Kuiti fire brigade soon arrived and the more hygienic contents of their fire extinguishers were played on the fire, which as it so happened had been caused by the dynamic braking system overheating.

Tea and Mrs F Mrs Frederickson believed it was safe to stand out on the carriage-way to sip her tea. It had been a bit of a scramble in the refreshment room this time with more people using the train because of sale day. Besides, it was pleasant standing out in the fresh February air away from all the congestion and confusion in the carriage. Youngsters were jumping on seats and running up and down the aisle, as were the parents Mrs F said. The menfolk, to a man, were munching on their pipes, and when the train went through the Poro-o-tarao tunnel you couldn't tell the difference between coal smoke and tobacco. Normally, the carriage would be engulfed by smoke from the engine when the train entered that tunnel. Half of the windows were wedged open, whic h guaranteed seepage into the carriage. Joe Harrison warned Mrs F about drinking tea on the carriage-way. The engine had gone for water and would soon be reconnecting with the train — with its inevitable, ungraceful graunch, enough to send hot tea cascading and dentures rattling. Mrs F, who had travelled on trains for

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most of her seventy-eight years, was up with the play enough to know that the big Ks were big because they had a massive water -carrying capacity. They didn't need to disconnect and go for water. That's what Mrs F believed anyway.

Secure in this knowledge she stood her ground on the carriage-way as the pipes and wilful brats continued to pollute the micro-environment. Just as she began thinking how green the hills were for this time of year, the carriage jerked backwards with sufficient force to send tea splattering over her dress and her rock cake rolling on to the line. The engine had indeed gone for water, as Joe Harrison had suggested, and now it was rejoining the train at a time when hardened train-travellers should have known to hold on for dear life to items of sustaining or, in the case of Mrs F's tea, considerable staining power. For Mrs F it wasn't nice to know that some things never change.

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Approved in Principle - and Pio Pio

T

here was no shortage of proposals mooted in days when railways were opening up the backblocks of New Zealand. In 1914 a scheme to build a light-railway line from Pio Pio in the King Country to the main-trunk connection at Te Kuiti was actually approved in principle. The line would carry freight to and from the farming districts of an isolated area of the North Island. In a dramatic twist it was announced that train engines would be electric, with the motive power being supplied by a power station constructed on the Wairere Falls. However, the Minister of Public Works, Mr Fraser, favoured steam as the energy source, which led to ongoing dialogue. The outbreak of the First World War put the idea on the backburner and, like a lot of ideas kyboshed by the intervention of hostilities overseas, it was shelved indefinitely and later disappeared off the drawing-board altogether. Another isolated backwater of the King Country —Kawhia on the west coast — was in line for connection with the North Island main trunk. It was just a matter of which mooted route would prove the most viable: Kawhia to Frankton, Kawhia to Te Kawa, Kawhia to Kio Kio or Kawhia to Hangatiki. The second route, that between Kawhia and Te Kawa, was most heavily favoured, but the prospect of construction was not pursued because of economic factors.

Ka 942 and the Adrenalin Junkies

K

a 942 was not a new train. In fact, it was one of the original fleet restored and now used to haul special excursions like the "Muster Express", which ran from Auckland to Te Kuiti to help celebrate the "Te Kuiti Muster", a recently-inaugurated event designed to put the King Country town on the map. What was new, though, was a segment of "Muster Express" passengers. As they climbed down from the red, steel carriages the Auckland yuppies stood out like Porsche sportscars in the Taumarunui hotel car park. Or like "a rack of Lamborghinis" as a local, woolly wit had it. One particular couple of well-heeled high-flyers were drawn, like scores of others, to the bulbous, blustering presence of the Ka motive force at the head of the train.

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The yuppie couple had all the gear. Designer sun-glasses, gelled hair, tanned smirks and strange parachute-like garments, bottomed off with top-of-the-range Reeboks. They still had their glasses of chardonnay in their hands as they clamboured down on to the track-side along with all the other celebrators of steam. This new generation had not experienced the mood swings of steam engines, unlike the other fans who clustered around the bows of the engine. They knew only too well the outbursts Ka 942 and his kind were capable of and kept their distance, as they looked up at the towering black monster that had returned to their lives, reviving old memories. The yuppies, obvious bungy-jumpers and black-water-rafters on other weekends, swaggered ever closer to the front of the engine, where they stood still sipping chardonnay, cooler by far and closer to the huge chunk of steel than the rest of the onlookers. Suddenly a savage blast of steam burst from the front of the engine with a sound not unlike a drum-roll at a Dire Straits concert. The two yuppies collected a direct hit. The young lady screamed and dropped her wine glass, as the steam billowed out her parachute garments like KZ7's spinnaker. She retreated as gales of laughter arose from the cluster of more crumpled, knowing citizens stationed at a cautious distance from old the restored engine. The young man, an adrenalin junkie, saw this challenge as an integral part of the total trip. He stood his ground as the steam blasted into his very being. Someone said it was the first time he had seen a human being steamcleaned. The designer glasses dripped with moisture, the gel ran from the Tom Cruise hair, and the glass of chardonnay had quite a head on it. Finally, Ka 942 considered itself relieved. The excess steam was shut off. The two young Aucklanders did their best to swagger off, looking like ditched airmen, to join the festivities in Te Kuiti's main street.

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Come Hell or High Water

T

hat the 1958 floods affecting the King Country -Waikato were serious was never in doubt. The heart was ripped out of the maintrunk railway connection all the way from Owhango, south of Taumarunui, to Frankton, with the main trunk's operations disrupted in a way that had never happened before. The line was severed for a week, the jugular vein of the railways arterial network broken by walls of water plunging down the catchment areas of the Upper Waipa River. Ninety miles of main-trunk railway were closed. There were nine major slips and many minor ones. A lot of the trunk was under feet of water and obviously inaccessible by rail, as well as being unapproachable by roads also blocked by slips and flood waters. One railway bridge was under fourteen feet of water, its state of repair impossible to gauge. The press of the day announced that the only sure method of travel between Auckland and Wellington was by air. This highly perceptive observation was challenged by one or two sages working on the clean-up operations. Boats could get through although it was suggested submarines would be a better bet, given the turgid nature of the flood waters. The Minister of Works, Mr. Watt, just happened to be in the district on behalf of the National Roads Board when the deluge hit. Politicians back then were hands-on characters, and before too long the Hon Mr Watt had taken charge of flood-rescue work. The wet, sockless (but with mandatory, business-as-usual black shoes and tie) Minister of Works was seen squelching through a marooned train near Otorohanga, keeping up the spirits of evacuees and assuring them that the flood waters would come down. The latter was a ministerial order, he assured the put-out locals. Our first encounter with the flooded railway occurred when we came upon the rail bridge across the Mangakewa River. The steel structure was taking a terrible buffeting, not just from the raging torrent but from logs, pieces of furniture, fence posts, railway sleepers and clumps of vegetation. The initial noise, an ungodly roar, was unforgettable. There was no way a train could have eased out over that maelstrom. As it was, the New Plymouth to Auckland railcar had to sit it out at Te Kuiti for the duration of the flood and line closure, and a number of through passengers became temporary residents of Te Kuiti.

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Once we'd got used to the roar of the flood waters we became aware of another, less-uniform sound. On higher ground and in the willow branches hundreds of displaced frogs croaked up a storm, indicating their displeasure, while other wild-life was equally disturbed by the torrent. Hundreds of eels slithered into the path of railway workmen slaving away to make fast the line.

A fire was set on dry ground and the eels were turned into sustaining snacks for the hard-working crews. In Taumarunui, as news of the terrible damage circulated, a group of railway workmen stood chatting near the breakdown van and mobile cookhouse awaiting instructions. There was a feeling of foreboding in the air: this, in terms of rail damage, was the big one. A foreman, primed for action, sprinted into the picture

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and, after allocating tasks to the gathered throng, singled out one young man and bestowed on him a sacred duty. "You," he said, "will peel potatoes." And for the next five days — for twelve hours a day — the young man happily peeled spuds to help feed the two hundred workers hell-bent on clearing the line. For five days he stuck to his post, peeling up a storm. On the sixth day he disappeared, probably feeling he had made his contribution to the official NZ Railways clean-up operation. It was later discovered that he wasn't even on the NZR payroll. Perhaps the most awesome affect of the floodwaters, apart from the emergence and disappearance of the phantom potato-peeler, was the washing away of hundreds of metres of bridge approaches north of Taumarunui, leaving the rails hanging in mid-air. Elsewhere gaping subsidence left the permanent way suspended like spiders' webs. Other stretches were hidden under tonnes of washout shale and rubble. Rail gangs were brought in from surrounding districts and, in a fine gesture, machinery was made available by contractors, farmers and others who had plant. As a consequence the line was up and running at least a week ahead of expectations. Flood damage to rail rolling-stock was minimal, and the predicted watery hell after the high water did not come to pass. The only casualties involved stock losses and the demise of a certain number of eels. Disgruntled frogs stopped croaking and picked up the pieces of their lives as the torrent receded. A Mrs Iris Perkins of Stratford, one of the passengers on the stranded New Plymouth-Auckland railcar, became a lifelong friend of the Te Kuiti family with whom she was billeted.

Before the Iron Horse

D

uring the construction of the North Island main trunk prominent Maori families in the Te Kuiti area hired out horses to the Railways Department for use on line formation. Several hundred horses were made available and permanent way formation progressed rapidly, in spite of the limited, mechanical, earth-moving plant available both north and south of Te Kuiti.

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Chapter 6

North to Opua "The Honeymooner"

B

ack in 1975 when Jenny, my wife, and I were visiting Northland on our honeymoon, we decided to take in a bit of train travel. A trip by train from Whangarei to the Bay of Islands appealed as an attractive option, and we approached Whangarei Station in high spirits. "Two tickets on the train to Opua please." "Why?" the ticket-seller grunted. It wasn't really a question. It had taken him several seconds to manhandle the slide window open to attend to our needs. The window seemed begrimed into a position of noncompliance, its grooves congealed with the dust and sweat of yesteryear, when real trains ran and people really wanted to travel; days of the Opua express when fully-fledged, streamlined, J-hauled passenger trains plied this line all the way from Auckland to the Bay of Islands. Now, just months this side of withdrawal, the mixed good with its single, dislocated, wooden carriage was a token gesture. No one really travelled from Whangarei to Opua by mixed goods any more. It was just a political sop, something the Railways Department, through the min ister, could throw at the opposition. "We still provide a social amenity in the far north, Sir — a passenger rail-service to enable the good people of Whangarei to travel in comfort to the terminus at Opua in the beautiful Bay of Islands." The ticket-seller had no standardised tickets. He was obliged to scribble on some sort of pro-forma document that catered for one-off— or two in our case — oddities. "Have fun, folks," he grunted before attacking the slide again, a process that took another ten seconds. The dust rose momentarily before settling back into its allotted slot. Out in the yard the mixed good awaited us, a modest train headed by a tarnished Da. As it wasn't even parked up against the platform we clambered over flinty stones to the siding, where we were obliged to swing like monkeys on to the carriage steps.

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Battered and forlorn, the carriage had seen better days. Fixtures were broken and most of the windows jammed shut. Some wit had etched "Silver Star" into the grime staining one of the windows; "Silver Star", the new prestige, passenger service between Auckland and Wellington, bore no resemblance to this decaying relic. Most of the windows, in fact, were caked with a hardened residue, almost as if cement dust from the wagons that served the Portland cement works just down the line had settled and set on the panes. Sheep turds rolle d around the toilet floor, which gave rise to a certain amount of speculation. “The Honeymooner", as we called the service, creaked through picturesque scenery at a very slow pace. Traveling down the main street of Kawakawa was a diversion privy to shoppers' purchasing power and spending habits, eye-balling the clusters of youths who hung out in the shadows of a wild-north-milk bar. You half ex-pected gunshots to ring out from some sniper on the roof of Woolworths taking exception to a train trundling right down the middle of his main street. Eventually we pulled into Opua and sat around the wharf piles, enjoying this neck of the Bay of Islands, until the return service, the home "honeymooner", rattled out of the yard through the drizzle and sea spray. Back at Whangarei we left the "honeymooner" and caught another mixed goods bound for Wellsford. We didn't call this one anything. By now the spartan carriages had lost some of their romance, and we still couldn't find a window that would open or, if we could, we didn't know when it would come crashing down like a guillotine and take an elbow off. At Maungaturoto we were advised that the passenger extension to Wellsford had been dispensed with. The carriage was required back at Whangarei and, as we watched the trains' lights disappear in the gathering gloom, we were obliged to seek emergency accommodation. The local hotel had a spare room but we had missed dinner by ten minutes. However, the gracious host invited us to join in with awedding-

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breakfast celebration being staged in the dining room. As we picked at cold saveloys and savouries, the swaying motion of the mixed-goods carriage stayed with us. We helped toast the bridesmaids then went to bed. Later we were awoken by an ungodly commotion, as the bride and groom departed the scene to commence their honeymoon. We figured they wouldn't be travelling by train.

Don't Call Us

I

n days gone by it didn't pay to take as gospel information given out by any railways clerk. Uncle Jack, an old hand at these matters, had it in mind to travel by railcar from Wellsford to Whangarei, but the bookings clerk was adamant that there were no spare seats on this service and that there were not likely to be any vacancies for several days. Uncle Jack, never one to take things at face value, turned up at the station the next day anyway and was not surprised to find at least twenty unoccupied seats. Ten seats were unreserved for any traveller between Wellsford and Whangarei. Uncle Jack considered flushing out the bookings clerk, but the ticket office seemed to be closed.

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Chapter 7

Suburban Sojourn Running Dead

G

len Eden station on the Auckland suburban system has an unusual origin. It was established in 1879 to serve Waikumete Cemetery, located directly behind the station. Coffins and mourners travelled out from the main Auckland terminus by train in days when trains played a far more dominant role in people's lives — and deaths.

Half-Day Rover

T

he "Day Rover" tickets offered as an inducement to train travellers on the Auckland suburban system were seen by some cynics as a bit of a have. Given the paucity of the services available it was suggested that "HalfDay Rover" would be a more appropriate title.

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Not So Rapid Rail Back in the early 1970s there was considerable debate about Auckland city's proposed rapid-rail system. Dialogue ensued regarding the ideal gauge. Some lobbyists preferred 4'81/2" over the standard 3'6", and the pros and cons were hotly debated in the press and elsewhere. It was all rather academic and slightly pathetic in retrospect as Auckland never did get the rapid-rail system it so badly needed —be it 4'8 1/2M or3'6" or 17'5". Mind you, that didn't stop reports on the planned, rapid-transit system rolling in. A 1975 paper suggested the construction of a doubletracked loop line, with bells on, from the existing Auckland railway station, which would circulate via the southern Queen Street area, up to the Civic Theatre precincts and continue its arc onto Karangahape Road before joining the existing line at Newmarket. It was all very heady, particularly when it was suggested that a connection to the North Shore via a tunnel would be feasible! Several countries had shown interest in manufacturing the trains required, each of which would carry 250 passengers. Top speeds had even been canvassed (120kph) not to mention the average (64kph). Mind you, in the underground loop the average speed would have to be limited to 34kph. Who cares or who cared? Even if the average speed in the loop were only 5kph it would have been faster than what we have now nothing and a train to nowhere.

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Chapter 8

Sound-Track

S

omeone once said that rock music and the railways went hand in hand. After all, as Elvis was in the process of inventing rock-'n'-roll, trains were still a dominant presence in the American soundtrack and landscape. The rhythms of the railways certainly fired some of the backbeats we used in our band, in days when we dabbled with guitars and dreams. The romance of the railways — the woebegone gestures of hobos and drifters, the wanderlust of escaping down the steel lines — gave rise to much of our early lyrical content. "The Railroad runs through the middle of the house" was a tune on everyone's lips in our early days. "Chattanooga Choo Choo" had been a favourite of our parents, harking back to the railroads of America when institutions like the "California Zephyr" were an integral part of people's travelling lives. Later we became aware of a tinny, little ballad called "Taumarunui" by Peter Cape, a New Zealand folk singer. It was released on Kiwi Records and qualified as pure Kiwiana. Compared to Elvis Presley's interpretation of "Mystery Train", Peter Cape sounded like a bookings clerk on one-too-many aspros. But it was as close to home as a railways song ever got: Taumarunui on the main-trunk line. Just down the tracks. We played it all the time, lost in the folklore of the chap who tried to get a job on the railways in Taumarunui because he had the hots for a "sheila" serving cups of tea in the refreshment rooms in the heart of the King Country. In the early 1960s, before the Beatles and girls took over, the railway station was our mecca. When we did hang around the jukebox, it was often to listen to songs like "Night Train" by Jim Forrest and "Last train to San Fernando" by Johnny somebody. And "Freight Train" by Rusty Draper which was covered by Nancy Whiskey, a Scottish songstress who wore tight-fitting blue-jeans as she fronted a bunch of Glaswegian musos called Chas McDevitt and his Skiffle Group. Skiffle. One of the more potent precursors of the Beatle beat. The shuffling skiffle-beat of "Freight Train" fired our hunger for railways and train travel. Skiffle sounded like a train in motion.

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It was significant that later, when rock music and girls consumed our lives, the first songs we wrote harkened back to railway themes: "Train of thought", "Love in the Daylight (Limited)", "Vestibule Girl". We were just small-town musos with big-break dreams, but our debt to the railways was obvious: "Scrambled on the seven-thirty, Latrines were filthy, the fitments dirty. The grog flowed down carriage 'E non-smoking'. Crawled towards a vacant box, Amongst the students from the university of hard knocks The grog flowed three-feet deep, no joking. Last stop Hangatiki, Three fifty miles to Paekakariki, Time for a tooth-brush at Paraparam, Must remember where I am ". These lines featured in an inferior, derivative tune called "Last Stop, Hard Knocks". Life was a bit of a hoot in those days. The lighthearted side of the railways was celebrated in song and verse. "Main Trunk Drunk", another example of the genre, was based on the perpetual Auckland-Wellington hophead: "He stumbled out into the vestibule singing 'Save the children, Jesus don't be cruel'. He sucked a dram of Drambuie and gave the guard an evil-smelling smile". "Gunfight at the Ka Corral" was a paean to a man-made hero — the Ka steam engine: "Hey, Ka, Steel giant, Steam dragon, Defiant..."

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As our range of emotional experiences expanded, there were more reflective moments: " We 're skirting the tidal creek where poky boats lie, Like crabs on a canvas bag, like lovers left high and dry. Over Dashwood Over when the going's good Over when we take the time to try". In later years a more sombre tone intruded. Songs of loss mirrored the sacrifice of innocence — as train services continued to be severed. "The trains don't stop here any more And the keys don't fit the door. Now there's no one left to carry on. I wanna ride that line just like my daddy did, Just wanna drop out badly like a sixties kid. But I can't find the line, The peace train runs no more. I wanna whistlestop and drop a day or two. Just wanna get laid back among that hippie crew. But I can't make it move, That old 'make love, not war'. I wanna take that train and travel second class, Laugh with weird dreamers, watch the years drift past. But I can't find the words, It's all been said before. " But there were occasional touches of whimsy, like "Last train to Pio Pio", a "Morning Town Ride" sort of song about a train — a railway — that didn't exist. "All aboard the Pio Pio train, (Pio Pio choo choo) It goes so fast and goes nowhere, But it goes past and I don't care ".

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And there was the undeniable disaffection for the alternatives — the automobile and the clogged highway-arteries to the north, beyond the heartland: "What's so great about the great south road? They show no mercy at Mercer. What's so big about the Bombay hills? They start out worse and get worser. What's so grand about the grand hotel? They don't kill no one with kindness. One man s paradise, another man's hell, And who can see through their blindness? What's so bad about the main trunk line? You don't get side-swiped at Drury. You don't get mangled at the Mangere turn-off. Who can see through their fury?"

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Chapter 9

In the Land of the Cow-Catcher Blood on the Tracks

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immy was a porter at a small-town station in days when Waikato Hospital used to transport venous blood by rail to outlying hospitals. Jimmy would never be able to challenge Albert Einstein in a straight battle of wits. He was an honest-to-goodness, fetch-and-carry man who knew how many trains made five, although beyond that number he was struggling a bit. One evening the "blood" train was late and the station master was taking more than a casual interest. Blood for the local hospital bloodbank was vital. If there were any delays the hospital needed to be notified, and they needed to know when the blood had arrived at the station. Very lives depended on it. Eventually the train arrived and the station master took stock of the blood supplies. "Jimmy," the station master bellowed. "Give the hospital a ring and tell them there's blood here. Lots of blood." Jimmy, who was unaware of the practice of blood being transported by train, got the wrong end of the stick and panicked. "There's blood everywhere down at the station. Lots of blood. Come quickly," he blurted to the hospital telephonist. The hospital staff swung into emergency mode, dispatching medical staff and ambulances, thinking there had been a bad accident at the station.

Varying Dairying Encounters

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here were days on the Cambridge branch when the train stopped at several dairy-factory stations to pick up varying dairy products - and passengers. Matangi provided milk products, most noticeably dried milk, Bruntwood produced butter and Hautapu cheese. Just the Hautapu factory survives today - to provide a wide range of dairy products - but no passengers.

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Mr Fragile and the Wicker Baskets Jimmy the porter used to help unload the large wicker baskets full of parcels off the trains. He was fascinated to find that just about every basket had the word "Fragile" labelled on it. This Mr Fragile (Jimmy pronounced it "Fragilly" when explaining his discovery to fellow workers) must be doing all right from a business perspective if the number of parcels he was receiving was anything to go by.

No Humping

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hen the Te Rapa marshalling yards were built a pronounced hump was incorporated into their construction. Wagons were pushed over the hump, and the momentum produced ensured they reached their destination. As is usual with this system a sign was erected to ensure that no unattached rolling stock was pushed up the hump. "No humping", the sign read. Inevitably the sign disappeared, only to surface in a bridegroom's bed on his wedding night.

Cambridge Heyday

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f someone had suggested that at one stage the twelve-and-a-half-mile branch line from Ruakura to Cambridge would be host to three passenger trains containing in total some 1500 Aucklanders, they would have been seriously disbelieved. But it did happen — once. NZ Railways ran such services when the 1950 Empire Games rowing events were held at Lake Karapiro, a few miles east of Cambridge. The Cambridge branch was in its heyday — for one day.

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Chapter 10

In the Land of Plenty Kaimai Tunnel Vision ;

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ne day it dawned on me that my children had missed out on much of the magic of railways. Sure, they had travelled on the Sydney suburban rail system often enough to know that a train, as such, is confined to whistling, steel lines. They had seen the ease with which the two-storeyed steel electrics left road traffic for dead. And then there was the time we took a trip aboard the Southerner from Christchurch to Dunedin. But that was when they were younger, and after the first four hours a certain amount of squirming and interrogation set in. "When do we get to Dunny, Dad?" was thrown at me from Timaru south. The age of new -era rail travel had now arrived. The Kaimai Express, a seconded Silver Fern railcar or two, had been commissioned to run from Auckland to Tauranga and Tauranga to Auckland with services travelling via Hamilton. It was the fulfilment of a dream. I used to fantasize about travelling on a bona fide passenger service over the Bay of Plenty extensions. Apart from a stint on the "Gorges Special" — a rail-enthusiasts' junket in the mid1970s which travelled through the now -defunct Karangahake and Athenree Gorges - the Bay of Plenty lines had presented a forbidding aspect. You would be lucky to see a goods train, let alone a passenger service. It seemed a gross waste of perfectly picturesque and painstakingly-constructed pathways to rail-travel pleasure. We used to spend a good deal of time travelling by road to the Whakatane area to see family, and I used to pine for a rail passenger ser vice from Awakeri to Whakatane at least, down the somewhat arthritic looking Whakatane board-mills line. Railcars use to run from Auckland to Te Puke, but what was stopping the powers that be from reintroducing the service and extending it all the way down that section of the east coast that fringed the Pacific, skirted exotic lagoons full of wondrous wildlife,

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and caught a glimpse of the unpredictable machinations of White Island off the coast? What was stopping the railways from running a new-era train along a stretch of line every bit as scenic as that followed by the Coastal Pacific in the South Island? Call it the "Sunshine Limited", "Bay of Plenty Zephyr", "Whakatane Flyer", or just plain "Arthur" — any name would do. Someone even suggested that the forestry line from Murupara to the pulp-and-paper mill at Kawerau could be used for passenger services. "The Forestry Daylight." It could be the making of Murupara, turning the outpost into a wooded wonderland where rootin', tootin', shootin' types could pack a pistol and a picnic lunch and go bush — until it was time to catch the "Forestry Daylight" back to civilisation, or Kawerau, whichever came first. At least we now had the Kaimai Express which was a step in the right direction. I had persuaded my daughter Sarah to take the trip from Tauranga to Hamilton with me, thinking perhaps she could catch up on some of the railways' magic along the way. If nothing else the departure setting was unique, resembling something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie (or Tom Cruise, in the case of my daughter). The Strand at Tauranga looked like some sun-drenched backwater just off the Gulf of Mexico, or maybe North Queensland. The blue water, palm trees and harbour-fringed eateries created a unique environment for a railway station. The day before, while I was resting in a harbour-front bar, a silver apparition appeared before me on the railway harbour-bridge. Had some Asian cartel purchased the railcar, and were members now using it as an elaborate supermarket-trolley to collect provisions from town, while its owners remained sunning themselves on the Mount Maunganui foreshore? The railcar made the same approach the next morning, the sun glinting off its silver surface as it curved over the harbour bridge. That was no supermarket trolley. That was the Kaimai Express. Sarah waited patiently at the Strand platform. I waited excitedly. The Kaimai Express took on board about twenty passengers, most of whom seemed animated enough. As the express drew away from the station and we bid farewell to landmarks such as the St Amand Hotel, an orange establishment which Ernest Hemmingway might have lumbered through,

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the buzz of train travel returned. The big love in Sarah's life was horses. She had the same fascination for the snorting, four-legged beasts as I had had at the same age — for iron horses. As the express climbed up towards the Kaimai Tunnel and the landscape became dotted with farmlets, the inevitable horses caught Sarah's eye. She became completely animated on seeing the animals. There was a pair of Arab geldings at Te Puna, a dramatic big grey on the skyline beyond Apata. Appaloosas bolted from the train as we stretched out across the flat towards Morrinsville. Sarah scribbled all sorts of equine data in her diary. She was really enjoying the trip now, although she went off the boil a bit when we went through the Kaimai Tunnel. The highlight of the trip for me proved to be boring to Sarah. You can't see horses in a tunnel. A passion for trains may not be hereditary. For my children railways played little part in their waking lives and awakening years. The nearest railway was five miles away from our place, and while it was true that on some nights when the wind was right you could hear the distant rumble of a freight train, it was hardly a total-immersion situation. Not like our growing up in a claustrophobic railway-town with trains dominating our days and entering our sub-conscious at night. Still, Sarah could say she had been on the Kaimai Express. So could I. Yet somehow the "highlight" — the plunge through the Kaimai Tunnel — didn't seem to take as long as it might have done in the old days. They say things seem shorter as you get older. "What did you think of the tunnel, dear?" I asked my horse-loving daughter. "I couldn't even see it, Dad. It was too dark." But that waterfront setting on the Strand, Tauranga. What a bonus. The most charming departure point of any train service in New Zealand, surely. And at least one stretch of Bay of Plenty lines had lost its forbidding aspect.

Frustration on the Line

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ack in the late 1960s and early 1970s Train Control Hamilton regulated all train movements on the Thames, Murupara, Rotorua

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and Kinleith branch lines, with the Regional Traffic Manager and the train-running staff located in adjacent offices. At the time a new train-control operator (TCO), who had an unhappy habit of acknowledging track calls ahead of station or signal-box calls, was the instigator of the following situation. While everyone applauded his desire to avoid trolley accidents, there would invariably be a suppressed grumble from signalmen, guards and shunters in most areas when they realised who the shift train-controller was. This dissatisfaction was demonstrated when a signalman/traffic assistant in a well-known logging town in the Bay of Plenty, who through sheer frustration with the said train-control operator, nearly landed himself in trouble. The signalman wanted to get the estimated time of arrival (ETA) of a logger and picked up the train-control phone. The conversation on the phone, which is linked to all station and track phones in the region, went as follows, beginning with the standard station call for identification: "Kawerau." Pause. Another voice says "Track." The TCO responds to the track call: "Kawerau." Another pause. Someone else says "Morrinsville." The TCO responds to Morrinsville. Our man hangs up, cursing under his breath about the tardiness of the TCO. Several minutes later he tries again...then again...then again... Each time the same scenario greets him. Our man is really getting frustrated now that the shunters are pressuring him on the yard to station phones, wanting to know whether to set a road for the logger or continue with their own yard shunt. After about twenty minutes of trying with the TCO our man, in utter desperation, grabs the control phone and yells into it. "Where's this f...ing train?" he bellows, unwittingly omitting the station call identification. A voice from Train Control (not the TCO) booms back: "What was that?" "Where's this f...ing train?" The voice replies: "How dare you use such language on the control phone, and do you know who you're talking to!" "No. Who?" "This is the Regional Traffic Manager." "Well, do you know who you're talking to?" was the slick reply.

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"No. Who?" was the RTM's response. "Thank goodness!" and slam goes the Train Control phone receiver.

Strange Geezer on the Geyserland

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ith the advent of the tourist boom railway passengers now come in all shapes, sizes and colours. The days of formal greys and navy blue cardigans are gone. Spotted on the Geyserland Express recently was an old man who fell into no category in particular, although because of his advancing years and wonky knee he nearly fell from the train as it pulled into Putaruru. I guess he was what you might term a pastiche tourist. Sartorially he sported bits of the old and the new. He must have

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been all of 85, yet his gaudy, Hawaiian shirt was very much from the Elvis Presley era. His pit-helmet hat was more appropriately 1920s, yet his Reebok sneakers (minus socks) were as contemporary as his Gucci shades. His baggy shorts, covering knees wonky and not so wonky, could have been from the Jan and Dean era but were more likely Baden-Powell inspired. A sophisticated video-camera was his pride and joy. He carried it around on his shoulder like an organ-grinder's monkey. Unfortunately he was still coming to terms with its operation, and many significant landmarks passed him by as he fiddled frantically with the lens aperture, colour-meter and range-finder. However, he scored splendid reproductions of car yards at Claudelands (just beyond the panoramic Waikato River crossing) and further car yards at Ngongotaha (just beyond the world famous Fairy Springs). Despite his stoop, the old man was very cheerful and friendly and had nothing but kind words to say about New Zealand and New Zealanders in general. Being Australian he wasn't short of a wisecrack and, in turn, didn't mind being the butt of local jokes. However, when he took extensive video-recordings of a rubbish fire on the skyline at Mamaku, you wondered if he were playing along with the joke or not. He had told fellow passengers he was determined to get video footage of a "geezer", and when someone suggested the rubbish fire was a steaming geyser, the old man, in a frenzy of whirring range-finders and clattering colour-meters, was able at last to capture a remarkable natural phenomenon — a rubbish fire at Mamaku.

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Chapter 11

Taranaki Odyssey The Hayfever Special It must have seemed a bizarre thing to do. At the height of a 1970s summer, with everyone else cooling off at the beach, we decided to travel into the backblocks of the King Country and inland Taranaki — by train. Decidedly unfashionable. I mean it wasn't even a swept up version of modern rail-travel. No sleek, airconditioned railcar, no faithfullypreserved, dignified, oldworld steam excursion chuffing jovially back in time. We would be travelling on the 8.55am Taumarunui to Stratford mixed goods — against the grain. On a scorching Dec ember day, as most people sought relief away from the rural oven of the interior, we plunged bravely into the browning recesses, captivated by the notion that this train in its current form would soon be withdrawn through a combination of disinterest and economics. "I travelled on one of the last mixed goods to ply the inland Taranaki line, young man." Would such an utterance to a grandchild ring hollow, or worse not ring at all, in years to come? Would our trip be a futile exodus into nostalgia that had already outlived the span of human memory? A burst of enthusiasm struck as the long, swaying mixed goods arced away from the main line beyond Okahukura, rumbled across the Ongarue River and main north highway and disappeared into the first tunnel. The adrenalin always rushed when I travelled over a stretch of virgin track. Virgin to me that is. The notion of entering uncharted territory was heady. Soon the air become heady. I had travelled this stretch of track before, but that was in the dead of a winter's night, back when the old railcar service to New Plymouth still plied the line on its strange operating schedule. At that time the railcar from Taumarunui didn't reach New Plymouth until 11.23pm, and the inky blackness outside the railcar window — I can barely recall seeing a single light beyond the tiny, country stations — concealed the secrets of

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one of the most isolated rural areas in the North Island. It was the longest, loneliest, rail journey imaginable, not relieved by the fact that I was not alone. I shared the railcar with one other passenger, a large, shambolic man who snored like a warthog all the way to Stratford, where he disappeared into the marshalling yards and was devoured by the night. Now, in 1975 as we re-emerged from the Okahukura Tunnel, the bright, mid-morning light shafted through those chinks of window surface that had not become too begrimed with dust and dirt. The first tunnel through the Okahukura Saddle was over 1500 metres long. Tunnels had always been rare in my early days of development as a train buff. As a child Te Kuiti to Auckland was the total extent of my experience of rail travel, tunnels being thin on the ground along that stretch of the main trunk. In fact, the Glen Innes tunnel, just prior to the journey's conclusion, was the only and eagerly-awaited plunge into temporary darkness before the bright daylight of Auckland. Excitement had surged again. Confronting a tunnel so early in the journey was a buzz for a rail enthusiast. However, it soon became apparent that other secretions were being triggered off. The Da diesel, throbbing unspectacularly at the head of the train, threw out an exhaust mix both pungent and eye-watering. The interior of the old wooden carriage contained deposits of dust like ash layers from a volcanic eruption. Carriage maintenance and cleaning had obviously been a low priority because of dwindling patronage. In the tunnels, of which there were 24 (enough to earn the line the sobriquet of "The Underground"), the diesel fumes became concentrated in the carriage and eyes watered profusely. Amongst our party of hardened train buffs and wide-but-watery-eyed prospects there were four or five hayfever sufferers. Soon the midsummer handkerchiefs emerged and the sneezing began. Beyond Matiere the bounteous honeysuckle bushes dangled languidly over the line. Privet bushes in the hinterland discharged their cruel irritants on the wings of the hot blustery wind. There was little relief. In the tunnels the diesel and dust got you; out in the browning valleys the honeysuckle and privet — and dust — maintained the cycle of sneezing, which now set its rhythm to the clack-clack of the wheels as the mixed goods stretched out over the unwelded lines. When we pulled into the backblocks township of Whangamomona

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everyone was hot, headachy and thirsty. A big, old, frontier-type pub dominated the township from its position at the edge of the bush-clad hills. Given that the train had stopped with a great wrench, indicating that we would not be continuing for some time (even the diesel engine seemed to be turned off or down), it struck us as appropriate to slip away to the pub with a red roof in what was very much a red-roofed town. Our party of eight descended on the peaceful watering-hole. The Whangamomona pub had probably never seen anything like it — not in recent years anyway. Four of us were sneezing and snorting to beat the band, while the other four merely expounded noisily about the rusticity of the place. The barman, the original man of few words, said one or two things. "Off the train, are you?" "Very much so." The guard, sweating profusely, eased himself on to a stool at the end of the bar and drained his half-pint in one swig. "Thirsty work this time of year." I don't know who said that, but it seemed poignant enough in this neck of the woods, wedged between two looming, green ranges. Whangamomona was the real back of beyond, locked in the womb of the heartland. The cool of the bar was an unexpected comfort as the temperatures outside rose into the high twenties. Most of the sneezing eased too, away from the fossil fumes and cruel foliage. "Hurry up you jokers," one of our party bellowed after wandering outside to take in the sights. "The bloody train's going - it's moving." "It's only shunting son," the barman soothed as he topped up our glasses. "Not due out for another twenty minutes." But when we saw the guard swing down off his stool and sprint out of the pub door, we figured it was time to go. Back on board the sneezing became so intense that I can recall one chronically-affected sufferer sneezing loudly into the hinterland and his call being answered by a lowing cow from a track-side paddock. It may have been some sort of misinterpreted mating-call, but the sneezer saw little humour in the situation. Eventually the "Hayfever Special" rattled into Stratford as the sun was setting. Our battle-weary party, some of whom were still sneezing and

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snorting, should have had the dignity of alighting from the dusty carriage directly on to the platform. However, the train had been diverted on to a vague line somewhere in the depths of the marshalling yards, and it took a considerable scramble across jutting lines and flint-sharp ballast to get back to civilisation. Within a matter of months the "Hayfever Special" was withdrawn from service, and half of us were addicted to antihistamines.

The "Underlander"

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eg, an acquaintance from Auckland, maintained that in keeping with the new-era policy of reinstating passenger services like the TranzAlpine and Overlander, NZ Rail should give serious consideration to introducing a passenger service from Taumarunui to New Plymouth, via Stratford, and call it the "Underlander". After all, railway employees used to refer to the Taumarunui-Stratford branch as the underground railway because of its 24 tunnels, none of which was inconsequential. Indeed, Reg thought the branch line through the rugged King Country-Taranaki hill country was an under-utilised resource. Reg believed the "Underlander" should run, perhaps, from Palmerston North to New Plymouth. By setting out from a large population centre there would be a better chance of some of that population being on the train. In addition, by travelling over a section of the main trunk (Palmerston North-Taumarunui) that spent a certain amount of time underground in tunnels the underland theme could be amplified. This underland theme could be further highlighted by issuing children with miners' helmets complete with real lights that glowed in the dark of the many tunnels. For the thrill-seekers bungy-jumps could be arranged off some of the mo re challenging, main-trunk viaducts. According to Reg bungy-jumping already occurred, using the old, abandoned Hapuawhenua viaduct.

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"Is nothing sacred?" I thought to myself. Mind you, I conceded that Reg's ideas, while bizarte, might have appeal. I also suggested that as a way of keeping people really in the dark, all-day stopovers in theTangirakau tunnel could be introduced.

Scapegoats of Opunake

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or some reason the goods train from Stratford was taking its time pulling into Opunake station on the Opunake branch line. Station staff were concerned because the train had already given its usual hoot indicating its intention to enter the station precincts. Very soon they were scampering down the line to find out what was causing the delay.

What greeted them could not have been better scripted by Gerald Durrell. The Db engine was moving very slowly under challenge from a massive, white billy-goat, its head down and horns hard against the cowcatcher. The goat was losing traction in the gravel but every now and then would rear up and charge the Db again. If that were not enough, the driver also had to contend with a second

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billy-goat attempting to roll the engine on its side. The engine crew and guard were doing their best to dissuade the goats by waving arms, shouting and generally sounding the horn. At one stage a foolhardy member of the crew alighted to confront the goats — to make them see reason — but was chased back into the guards van for his troubles. It was utter pandemonium for some minutes, and onlookers fell about laughing at the sight. Indeed, one of the audience was so distracted he forgot what he'd come to the station for. The goats' owner finally arrived to corral his adventure-seeking charges, and the Stratford-Opunake goods was able to reach its destination. As the same service rumbled past next day the goats, heavily tethered, were grazing peacefully, realising perhaps that a Db diesel engine can be a formidable foe. Goats can be goats. A bit like a couple of Don Quixotes tilting at windmills.

Under its own Steam

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n the Waitara branch in the 1960s a train driver found it necessary to leave his Ab shunter in the loop, while he attended to urgent business some distance from his engine. When he returned the Ab was drifting off, unattended, down the line at a useful clip - under its own steam. The driver, suddenly slipping into sprint mode, could make no impres sion on the runaway and, after a quick appraisal, hailed a taxi to head in the general direction of the rapidlyreceding Ab. After a short, sharp car-chase, the driver resumed his sprint across a paddock and reclaimed his engine just before it hit the points at Lepperton Junction. The taxi-driver was the only witness to the slip-up, and taxi drivers, like priests at confessionals, never tell.

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Chapter 12

Way Out East The Railway Runs through the Middle of the Runway

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t's the sort of thing you might more readily associate with a South American banana republic — or perhaps an Irish outpost. The railway lines to Gisborne and the Gisborne Airport share the same ground, not for any great distance but for long enough to make you think. The combined road-rail bridges of the South Island, where a single bridge had to accommodate both road surface and railw ay lines, were one thing, but the Gisborne Airport-Railway situation seemed far more absurd— at first.

In fact, the situation was not as dangerous as it may have appeared. During the Second World War the Royal New Zealand Air Force, which had been using Gisborne aerodrome as a training base, found they needed to extend the runway. The only possible route was due south which would take the runway over the Napier-Gisborne-East Coast line. Compromises had to be reached in a hurry. Wars won't wait for negotiation and realignment, so a series of safety measures was put in place with trains basically giving way to planes, and the Gisborne line continued to run across the runway of Gisborne Airport.

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End of the Line

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t's easy enough fronting up for the inaugural run of a new rail service. The thought of being there at the outset of something momentous, a feature of our transport system that could become as ominous as the Orient Express, would be motivation enough. It felt different being in attendance for the last journey of a run-down rail service, particularly if you weren't aware it was the last run. On Sunday 30 May 1976 we just happened to be in Gisborne visiting relatives during the course of an east-coast rail jaunt that would see us catch the Gisborne railcar and the Endeavour express for the first time at Napier. There was a considerable melee of dignitaries, enthusiasts and fellow travellers milling around the station. Cameras flashed, movie cameras whirred. We couldn't fathom the reason for the total focus on Fiat railcar, number Rm 105. It was reminiscent of the days when the 1956 Springbok rugby tourists barnstormed around New Zealand in railcars. This time it couldn't be the Boks, who were busily engaged in a titanic test-series at home against the visiting All Blacks. And it couldn't be the Beatles touring New Zealand by railcar. Their light had been extinguished in 1970 when the wheels fell off the Beatle bandwagon. And yet, I was reminded of an unlikely Beatle connection with the Gisborne railcar. The last time I had travelled on the spluttering Fiat — it was labouring even then — the Beatle spasm was at its most convulsive. That was back in 1967, the year of "Sergeant Pepper" and "All you need is love". The Beatles had performed the latter song live on international television satellite link when millions saw them singing to the world. The song "All you need is love" was then withdrawn until it was finally released on record several months later. As the railcar from Napier pulled into Gisborne station late in 1967, the Beatles' global, good-time song came blaring out of a young man's transistor radio. The song was so instantly recognisable — the anthem of the sixties — that the moment of recognition rooted me to Gisborne railway station. For years after that, whenever the mock Marseillaise at the beginning of "All you need is love" sounded, an image of Gisborne station and a rattling, Fiat railcar entered my mind.

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On 30 May 1976 the dignitaries, enthusiasts and fellow travellers were saying farewell to a service that would be sorely missed. The Gisborne to Napier railcar; the epitome of the rural rail car. The service that ran through people's lives. It took kids to school, mothers shopping, fathers fishing. It conveyed workers back to town as the sun went down. Sometimes it dropped you right outside your farm gate. It never failed to stop - and now it was stopping altogether. A sad message was chalked up on the timetable board at Napier station that day: "Endeavour 1.25, Railcar never."

Cow Catchers and Leg Pullers

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hen we were really young train fans, when we tended to believe what grown-ups told us, we were taken for a few rides. Mr Jacobs, a train-driver who lived in our street, was a chronic leg-puller from way back. The trouble with Mr Jacobs was that he was a real train-driver and, because he knew so much about the steel gods we idolised we hung on his every word. Another problem was that his face was often masked in coal dust and, what with his cindery eyes and thin, unreadable lips, you could never tell whether he was having you on or not. Mr Jacobs gained considerable mileage out of the cow -catcher. I already knew that the cow -catcher was the track-clearing device attached to the front of locomotives, but Garth Fortescue didn't. Not only was Garth a new recruit to the world of train-worship, he had been a bit of a bird-watcher in days before the thunderous allure of the railways forced him to put down his binoculars. Garth had heard the term cow-catcher and for a while, when he was very young, placed it alongside the oyster -catcher, as a breed of bird. Now, even he could not conceive of a bird big enough to pluck grazing Friesians off the Te Kumi lowlands. But the cow-catcher was still a bit of a myth to Garth and one day, when we were hanging around the station watching the goods trains come and go, we got chatting to Mr Jacobs. "What's a cow-catcher, Mr Jacobs?" Garth Fortescue asked, looking up at the angular train-driver with eyes that had been behind binoculars for too long. "That's the cow-catcher there son," pointed Mr Jacobs as we wandered towards the front of the Ab shunter he had fired up. "It's a good

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one too. We've caught several cows with that one." Garth looked at Mr Jacobs who continued wiping his hands on an oily rag, his face a dusty mask. He could see the look of surprise on Garth's face. "Mind you, we throw the little ones back." My father and Burt Jacobs were pretty good mates. Sid Fortescue, Garth's father, was also one of the in-blokes who did quite a few things together. For a few years all three families spent summer holidays together at Opoutama, way out on the east coast between Wairoa and Gisborne. They were typical, old-fashioned, New Zealand two-weekers with wives cooking, kids swimming and husbands off fishing. For train buffs like us the times at Opoutama were made doubly memorable by the presence of the Gisborne-Napier line squeezing around the headland on its way to Wairoa. On days when we tired of the beach, when it was raining or when our sunburn was severe, we would catch a mixed goods to Gisborne for the day. On those occasions you couldn't rely on the fathers to drive you up the coast road. They'd be stuck fast to a rock like barnacles, fishing for schnapper, for kahawai — for glory. Trains played a part in the fishing too. One evening we all caught a train to Whakaki and after a bit of a hike and stumble came to a lagoon where we went floundering —in more ways than one. Normally we would have gone by car, but the menfolk had been sipping keg beer for much of the afternoon and were becoming, as my sister observed, "preserved". The womenfolk were able to persuade them that the train was a safer option. Mr Jacobs, tanned and smirking, seemed more "preserved" than the others and at one point, long after a dusky gloom had settled on the lagoon, slipped away from the knot of people pulling on the flounder net. It was considered likely that Burt had stumbled back to dry ground to sleep it off. As the net was hauled on to the bank Burt Jacobs could be seen lying amidst the flapping flounder. Dead to the world. Possibly dead! The children were hurried away by the mothers while the menfolk dealt with the catch. By the time we caught the return train everyone was very sober. Next day Burt Jacobs was seen wandering down to the water's edge with his fishing-rod in his hand, as if nothing had happened.

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Years later the story leaked out how Burt Jacobs, as cold as a mackerel in the flounder net, appeared to be all in. Some quick thinking on the part of Sid Fortescue ensured that a steady flow of warm liquid was played on the snarled train-driver. Such a deluge soon had Burt back in the land of the living, and before too long he had leapt out of the net that had threatened to consign him to a watery grave.

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Chapter 13

Bedlam in the Bay Congestion in the Vestibule

O

ur trip on the Bay Express through Hawkes Bay had been pleasant and orderly until now. Several seats of Japanese tourists quivered with excitement from time to time as various video cameras whirred in the general direction of passing phenomena: non-specific shots of farmers, not so much ploughing their fields as ghosting past the train in their BMWs and vague, unfocused close-ups of the back of the guard's head as he directed operations from the platforms at Woodville, Dannevirke and Ormondville. "Ah, where please is Waipukulau?" The question, I eventually realised, was directed at me. "Waipukurau is next," I replied, suddenly aware of the young tourist's twitchy hand movements. Was that a sub-machine gun in his hand? No. Just another wretched video camera. It can be disconcerting when a casual reply to a tourist's question is captured with the intense whirring of a video camera. I felt as though I were being interviewed for Tokyo Ten Newshour. "Ah, Waipukulau next. Thank you." "Next" was just a fleeting moment, for almost immediately the Bay Express began braking as the homely houses and pleasantly-cluttered backyards of Waipukurau flitted past. The Japanese enclosure erupted. They had so much gear to gather up — movie cameras, videos, conventional cameras, walkman stereos — that by the time the Bay Express eased to a graceful stop the young tourists were still untangling and unplugging themselves from their high-tech toys - and one another. "Waipukulau, Waipukulau," the leader yelled as he sprinted down the aisle, trailing leads and cords. Seconds later the other tourists flew past in a wedge that suggested some of them were still tangled up in earplug extensions. Before the leader could reach the vestibule he was confronted

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in the narrow aisle by a thick-set man who had just got on the train. Everything went into slow motion as the tourist and the in-coming passenger eased past one another, rather like two cautious torn cats, neither wishing to provoke the other with a sudden movement. The thick-set man saw the phalanx coming and retreated to a vacant seat, as a knot of tourists stampeded past making strange "Waipukulau, Waipukulau" sounds. The worst was yet to come, and perhaps NZ Rail have to take some of the blame. With the burgeoning popularity of tourist trains came burgeoning numbers of tourists. Vestibular congestion was a distinct problem at one stage, particularly as the new trains didn't stop for long at some of the intermediate stops. The idea was laudable. Don't have your crack tourist trains dallying unnecessarily at intermediate stops. Develop a reputation for good time-keeping. And yet on this occasion, at least, there didn't seem to be a contingency plan to deal with unexpected flash floods of passengers wanting to get on and off at stations not usually subjected to such attention. The knot of alighting Japanese tourists entered the carriage vestibule just as a party of Canadian backpackers boarded the train. The collision of humanity caused all movement to cease. The last of the backpackers had pulled the carriage door shut behind him which did not help the traffic flow. A third variable entered the equation and added to the congestion when the guard, who had been shepherding two women from Woodville to their correct seats, crashed into the vestibule from the adjoining carriage. As the train couldn't leave the guard's signal, there was no danger of those wishing to alight at Waipukurau missing their stop. Indeed, the Japanese could see advantage in the situation as they captured the chaos on their videos. The two

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women from Woodville were subjected to a good deal of jostling as backpacks caught them amidships and elsewhere. Eventually the guard was able to make it through the maelstrom to the door, and the pressure was relieved. The Bay Express was due to depart Waipukurau at 12.17pm, which is a pretty exact and exacting departure schedule. As another example of tight timetables the Overlander at one stage was expected to depart Taihape at 3.01. What's one minute between railway friends? It looks good and efficient on paper, but giveme the old days any day. Trains used to arrive at "about twenty-past". They used to stop — often for longer than was necessary — but at least you knew you had a good chance of catching any given train if it pulled into the station at about the same time as you abandoned your seized-up car. There was none of this effete 3.01 departure-time nonsense. Mind you, the old trains presented their own version of chaos. Panic stations used to be associated with refreshment stops, which set off stampedes of passengers hell-bent on a pie and cuppa. Such human phalanxes often encountered tides of travellers counter to the flow, and congestion in the vestibule was a natural outcome.

To Beat the Band

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n 1876 the first steam train travelled from Napier to the new station at Waipukurau. This historic journey was captured in the following words by a journalist travelling on the train: "The passengers generally found the swaying of the railway vehicle most agreeable, but it must be recorded that others, particularly the ladies, found the motion unsettling. In some sections of the journey the carriage tended to pitch from port to starboard. "The multitude then proceeded to do justice to a mighty repast admirably set forth by the good people of Waipukurau. Food and drink there were a-plenty. All were consumed — by many in grossly undignified fashion — by this great company of railway travellers. "Repeated blasts of the engine's whistle could not stir many brave souls who had looked over -long on the wine when it was red. The Napier town band was in a parlous plight. They'd lugged and puffed their way over forty miles of railway on a hot September day. Many were the Good

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Samaritans ready and anxious to quench their brazen thirst. When the train left the bass drummer was not aboard. Nor were four other players. The band was blasting away in fine style. In the general confusion few noticed that, almost evenly divided, the bandsmen dazed by drink and fatigue were playing two different tunes." (Reprinted from Rails magazine.)

Parasite on the Passenger Train

T

here once was a railway reprobate who got around a fair bit of the North Island without paying a penny. (This was in the days before decimal currency.) He made a habit of catching trains without purchasing a ticket and would then loiter in the carriage vestibule until the guard could be seen entering in an "All tickets please" capacity. Before the guard reached the vestibule the freeloader would ease himself out the door of the speeding carriage, take a firm grip of the hand-rail and crouch down on the carriage steps. It was difficult for the guard to detect such blatant exploitation, particularly under cover of darkness. As the guard moved away, the outlaw would ease himself back into the carriage vestibule and eventually merge with the fare-paying passengers and find a spare seat. Guards of course became aware of the practice, and it was often part of their policy to undertake a head count, the total of which should balance against the number of ticket holders set out on an independent list. However, head counts on a ten-carriage express often took a while to gather, by which time the parasite had alighted at a station and was well clear of detection. It was a well-worked ruse and stood the freeloader in good stead until the day he was travelling through Hawkes Bay. After sneaking on to the train at Ormondville he swung out like a seasoned trapeze artist on the hand-rail, crouched down with a smirk and waited for the gullible guard to clear the vestibule. Just beyond Ormondville stands the gaping Ormondville viaduct where suddenly the train eased to a stop in the middle of the massive steel structure. The parasite, who had no head for heights, felt as if he were clutching the wing struts of a DC3. There didn't seem to be much between him and the yawning chasm below. Vertigo got the better of him, and he very nervously eased his way back on all fours into the

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carriage vestibule. As he scrambled to his feet he found a grinning guard confronting him. "You didn't have to climb the viaduct to catch the train, you know son. There's a perfectly good station for such purposes just back down the line." The freeloader nodded vacantly, realising the game was up. "Now then can I see your ticket please?"

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Chapter 14

When the Railway Ran Through the Middle of the Town Pub Sprint

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hen the railway ran through the middle of downtown Palmerston North, some passengers took advantage of the fact that a homely pub beckoned from across the street. Rather than endure the stampede to the refreshment rooms, these opportunists would slip quietly into the pub for a couple while the engine went for water. Train drivers were aware of this practice and if, in the nature of things, passengers lost track of the time as the draught beer began to touch the sides, the driver would render three blasts on his whistle. This led to a hectic scramble out of the pub and a sharp sprint across the square before the train departed. The opening of the Milson deviation sealed off this avenue of pleasure, with trains being diverted well to the west of the city through some of the most parched wastelands of Palmerston North. The mad scramble at the old station, had it survived, could have became a tourist attraction rather in the manner of the bulls of Pamplona. It was certainly no pub crawl.

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The Circle Line

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hen Ben was based at Palmerston North he used to travel on what he referred to as the circle line. He would catch the New Plymouthbound express at Palmerston, trundle up the Taranaki line as far as Stratford, transfer to a New Plymouth-Taumarunui service, which would take him due east on the inland Taranaki line, rejoin a main-trunk service at Taumarunui and arrive back in Palmerston North a consider able number of hours after setting out, thus completing the mythical circle. Ben would also arrive back at base a little worse for wear. At the time he was doing a line with one of the refreshm e n t l a d i e s a t Palmerston North, and when he bid his initial farewells to her he was decked out in a sparkling white shirt, as was the fashion habit of the day. Following total immersion in the twenty-odd tunnels of the inland Taranaki line and a not dissimilar number on the main trunk between Taumarunui and Palmerston North, the fallout from the various steam engines had turned his sparkling white shirt a smutty grey. His complexion and hair — very much James Dean in style and colouring — had also changed shape and hue, so much so that his lady-friend at the refreshment rooms almost failed to recognise him when he wandered in exhausted and thirsty after negotiating the "circle".

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Chapter 15

From Darkness into Light A Rail Buff Reborn

I

t was a joutney of discovery, something quite spontaneous that came out of nothing. I had to get from Wellington to Palmerston North in days when people did that sort of thing. On a whim, and because it was such an unpleasant day, I decided to go by train. The ticket seller, yawning, gave me an option: I could go via the Wairarapa or up the main trunk via Levin. It had never occurred to me that there was a line up through the Wairarapa, at least not one that had passenger services on it. Residual recollections of the Rimutaka incline survived, but somehow when the tunnel went through in 1955 many of those memories were buried. These were the days of rail-buff remission on my part, when the allure of rail had dimmed somewhat. By choosing the Wairarapa option I rekindled my interest in train travel. The beginnings were not propitious. Along windy Wellington station commuters blustered and porters with sleep in their eyes pushed brooms. It was still predawn as the railcar swayed out through the marshalling yards and along the seasprayed harbour rim. Cold people huddled at gloomy, drizzle-washed stations. A feeling of invincibility swept over me. Normally I would be queuing up to catch the train, caught in the work-a-day world, trapped on the treadmill. But I was going the other way for once, on holiday on a work day, released temporarily from the brown-briefcase jungle. Taking an alternative route.

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The alternative route swept up the Hutt Valley where commuters' lights were going on in busy kitchens. Porridge bubbled and people bustled. The lights receded for a while and, as the squally rain continued to spit at the railcar windows, we entered the long Rimutaka tunnel. The rain stopped of course, but natural darkness was exchanged for unnatural. I became aware of the sounds of a railcar in a tunnel: the undulating roar and occasional metallic swish. The mesmeric sound had me nodding off as we passed the half-way mark. Years ago, almost directly above this point, the Fell engine combinations panted into Summit station high above the Wairarapa plains. The wind would have whistled around the engines, playing with the plumes of coal smoke; the wind — a vortex really — fit to blow away anything that wasn' t nailed down. In an era when hats were worn casually, as an integral part of one's attire, hundreds of bowlers and fedoras must have ended their days in the ravines and gullies below Summit station. Back in the Rimutaka Tunnel, insulated from the elements, the railcar's roar was losing its momentum, like a spent rocket, as the end of the tunnel approached. Ears popped and children began to squirm. With a triumphant blast the train emerged from the dark and curved steadily out above the green Wairarapa. The rain had stopped. The dark sky was clear blue. Dawnhadbroken while the train was in the tunnel, and now the new-day sun was poking fingers of light into every corner of the carriage. It was a breathtaking transformation, coming from the gloom of pre-dawn Wellington and the stale darkness of the long tunnel into the clear, clean vista of southern Wairarapa. From the elevated embankment beyond the tunnel the translucent waters of sprawling Lake Wairarapa shimmered away to the south. I didn't know there was such a lake, and if I had been told or had read about it, it would never have occurred to me that it could be so vast. The green paddocks extended right down to the lake's edge and just seemed to continue underwater until green was replaced by a watery blue-grey. The lake looked like a vast expanse of surface flooding. Perhaps Lake Wairarapa was very young as lakes go, lacking the age that bestows beaches and coves. It was a symbolic moment for me, the lapsed rail buff: the moment when I realised that NZ Railways was not just confined to the North

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Island main trunk, with perhaps a holiday excursion on the Gisborne branch as a treat. As the railcar wended its way up through the Wairarapa, through Featherston with its colonial cottages, past Masterton with its friendly, oldworld, refreshment-room staff (even the pies tasted tangier), I was already making plans — a pledge really — to travel on as many NZ Railways services as possible before it became illegal. As the railcar changed course beyond Woodville and snaked though the awesome cleft that is the Manawatu Gorge, the jolting feeling returned. How the hell could I have overlooked all of this as well? Travelling by rail through the majestic Manawatu Gorge? When we reached Palmerston North I had almost forgotten why I had come. Whatever it was, it didn't seem so important any more.

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Chapter 16

Panic Stations Limited Journeys

M

y grandmother was a forthright person — and a train fan. Or rather she was from that generation who assumed that trains were the principal means of getting from A to B and always would be. Getting from A to B was a lot easier than getting from Wellington to Te Kuiti on one occasion. Nana used to visit friends in the capital, travelling down on the overnight express and returning on the Limited. Nana also enjoyed a sherry tipple from time to time, and just prior to leaving Wellington she nipped away a couple of times at her friends' place before braving the teeming hordes at Wellington station. It was a blustery day, and while trying to keep her hat on and her wits about her in the rush for the soon-to-depart Limited, Nana somehow found herself on a suburban train bound for Johnsonville. As the train pulled out and the sherry wore off, she became vaguely aware of the fact that the interior of the carriage did not resemble the interiors she was used to. Still, the train was heading north, although it seemed to arc away over the Hutt highway a lot earlier that normal. "Faster trains, eh?" Nana thought. That thing called progress, she surmised. She settled into her seat waiting for the two long tunnels of the Tawa deviation. The Johnsonville suburban entered a tunnel, sure enough, but it was through it in a trice. Deceptively quick, these new Limiteds, Nana thought. The "Limited" continued climbing up through suburban stations that, while they looked typically Wellingtonian, rang no bells in her now thoroughly sober head. Crofton Downs? Ngaio? And why was the Limited stopping at such insignificant stations? The guard, a jovial sort, soon revealed the source of her confusion, and before too long the suburban service pulled into the terminus of Johnsonville. Nana, who seemed to have friends and acquaintances all over the lower half of the North Island, knew a gentleman in Johnsonville

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and decided to drop in on him unexpectedly. Further sherry tipples were shared as Nana and the gentleman in Johnsonville laughed at the situation and recalled the days when north-bound passengers could indeed travel all the way via Johnsonville to Te Kuiti and further north, in days when the original, main Manawatu and Wellington railway line extended beyond Johnsonville. Two days behind schedule Nana arrived back in Te Kuiti with tales of great joviality and conviviality, but minus her hat which is probably still wedged in the luggage rack of the Johnsonville train.

Murder on the Oriental Bay Express?

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ll was quiet on the overnight train. All save the noises of the drifting, graunching carriages and the angry, urgent coughing of the ancient

steam engine as it willed its charge through the haunted mountains. Darkness prevailed. Not a soul stirred in carriage K. The only sign of life was a tiny moth drawn to the milky lights signifying location of the ladies' toilet. Suddenly a long, harsh scream rose above the roar of the train. A woman's scream. Darcy, who had been sleeping fitfully anyway, no thanks to the white powder found floating on his minestrone, leapt from his seat and raced towards the source of the scream. He burst through the vestibule, dropped his shoulder to better facilitate his entry into carriage B — but it was too late. The woman had stopped screaming. Meanwhile a shaggy dog disappeared into the shadows of the vestibule.

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Chapter 17

Railway Characters and Charlatans Dymock and his Three Pies

D

ymock used to live for refreshment stops. A big man, he took a lot of topping up, rather like the Ka engines that pulled him around the North Island in his capacity of train buff. When Dymock's sugar level dropped he became as edgy and as malfunctioning as any engine without oil. Consequently Dymock usually headed the charge to the cafeterias when it was "Time for refreshments". His favourite meal, railwayoriented or otherwise, was three pies. Even when he ate out, that is when he wasn' t on a train, Dymock preferred three pies to steak and eggs or even fish and chips. One suspects that come Christmas Day Dymock would round up three pies rather than the proverbial turkey to celebrate the occasion.

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Between refreshment stops Dymock was a difficult passenger, particularly on those long hauls through the central North Island, between Te Kuiti, Taumarunui and Taihape, when pies tend not to satisfy and sleep won't come to take your mind off your churning stomach. Dymock was overj oyed when NZR introduced on-board refreshment services. First there was the Blue Streak railcar with its snacks service and later the fully-fledged buffet cars on long distance trains like the Northerner and Silver Star sleeper. Dymock found it hard to sleep on the latter but it was a piece of cake to eat at the buffet, whenever he liked and whatever he liked. Sure, pieces of cake, indeed the good, old-fashioned railways fruit cake was available, but Dymock kept going back for his beloved three pies. By the time the Silver Star pulled into Wellington he and the buffet attendant had lost count of the number of pies Dymock had consumed. It was an altogether more satisfactory arrangement as far as the sixteen-stone train enthusiast was concerned. Fellow passengers found him to be more agreeable and laid back too: fewer of the kamikaze charges to the refreshment rooms and not so much restless gnawing of knuckles in the moonlight between stops. Luckily for Dymock NZR never introduced the British system of dividing trains to cover alternative routes, certainly not in the days following the introduction of the buffet car. Dymock, while travelling overseas on British Rail, once found himself in a devilishly dicey situation, once again because of his stomach - and the British system of dividing trains. It was down in Sussex somewhere, on the London to Portsmouth train, when hunger pangs began to eat away at Dymock, despite his having recently consumed a hearty British breakfast. Portsmouth-bound Dymock went looking for the buffet. Fellow travellers and public address announcements had alerted him to the danger of being stranded in the buffet car when the train split in two. That section of the train containing the buffet car was destined for Bognor Regis. The remaining buffet-less assemblage would complete the journey to Portsmouth. Dymock was still waiting for his three pies, as the final warning - the one he heard — instructed Portsmouth-bound passengers to return to their seats immediately. "Bognor Regis here I come," Dymock thought to himself as the

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steaming pies were served up. Too bad about the disrupted travel arrangements. Too bad about the inconvenience to his Aunty Molly and Uncle Ralph who would be waiting to greet him at Portsmouth. Great armies march on their stomachs, someone once said. Someone should have marched on Dymock's stomach and put it out of commission.

Bright Sparks

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very railway town seemed to have one — a railway-town clown. He was the attention-seeking type who delighted in climbing yard-light towers and semaphore signals, who tampered with tablet exchangers and dawdled across the tracks, much to the consternation of station staff and engine drivers. Mind you, Des, our railway-town clown, was several turns short of a turntable. For many years he thought that engines had firemen on them so they could extinguish any fires started by errant sparks from the engine's chimney. He reckoned they should have been issued with red hats and engines fitted with sirens. He thought the Waikato spark arrester was a man who went around arresting bright sparks who got too smart on the express as it travelled from Huntly to Te Awamutu, rather than a piece of equipment designed to restrict sparks escaping from the funnels of steam engines and setting fire to the greater Waikato. Des's escapades ended the day he clambered up a signal gantry for reasons known only to himself. He was about to do an attention-seeking apecall, when the signal arm he was clinging to dropped into the "go" position. Des lost his grip and fell from a height that, while not great, was challenging. He landed heavily amongst discarded rails and sleepers, with a piece of shredded steel rope

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that entered an aperture or two adding to his indignity. From his hospital bed Des swore that his days of playing around the railway yard had well and truly gone. In future he would play in his own backyard.

Changing of the Guard

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om the guard used to drive a Vanguard car which he called appropriately the guardsvan. Tom was one of those staunch, oldworld guards who would just about die for his train. His guardsvan was his castle. When the idea was floated that guardsvans (and by association, guards) could be dispensed with on goods trains, people, Tom in particular, threw up their hands in horror. The train as an entity would be unbalanced. It would look silly. It might even fall off the line. The situation was seen to be circuitous. To some the guard's raison d'etre was to occupy and generally maintain the guard's van, a lot of his functions relating solely to the van's upkeep. In winter feeding the potbelly stove seemed to be his most onerous task. The scurrilous suggestion of eliminating the guardsvan was howled down by many, but harsh economic reality was beginning to point the finger at the funny

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little beach bach on wheels bringing up the rear. How would it be, consultants asked, if such guard-and-guardsvan-like activities could be seen to have little contiguity with the running of the train? From that point a change in perspective emerged and the guardsvan came to be seen as little more than an uneconomic encumbrance at the tail of the train: a piece of non-profit making baggage, a dragging anchor even. In this harsh new climate the guard's duties beyond the guardsvan could be performed by the train-driver's assistant. Guards and guardsvans were left isolated without a wheel to stand on. Guardsvans disappeared into the mists of antiquity. However, even now, when a long freight train ghosts past behind powerful, electric engines, the whole caboodle looks incomplete — naked almost — without a caboose or guardsvan to complete the picture. As a footnote to this account it is sobering to recall that in 1975 NZ Railways tendered for the supply of no fewer than 56 guardsvans, or cabooses, as their class Fm status dictated.

Best-Dressed Hobo

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here was a common enough notion that the railway hobo was a keepsake of American mythology. He was a proud wastrel who travelled illegally on the moaning freight trains that criss-crossed depression-beset America of the 1920s, one step ahead of the law and one jump behind any reasonable chance of material betterment. Sinclair Swain was a New Zealand rail hobo of sorts, an itinerant who travelled illegally in his rootlessness to satisfy some craving for change and stimulation. Despite the 1960s freedom, things weren't free enough for Sinclair. He was Henry Mancini, James Bond, the Promenade Bar of the Mon Desir.

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Sinclair wore a three-piece suit and carried a briefcase as he ducked from railcar to Limited and back to "goods with car". Because of his demeanour and impeccable dress no one thought for one moment that he might be exploiting the system. No, he was obviously some sort of railways inspector or perhaps a lawyer whose Jag had broken down, forcing him to take temporary conveyance by train. With Sinclair there was a lot of fantasy involved, but a lot of the calls he made were real enough. Any port in a storm. Any station in the rain. Sinclair had a little black book of names, women's mainly, of people who lived in railway towns and welcomed his nocturnal intrusions. They were lonely women, prepared to put him up for a night until the barking summons of the diesels got to him. Or when train-driver husbands returned from their overnight duties. I first encountered Sinclair on the main trunk, somewhere between Pukekohe and Mercer. I was on my way home from the Big Smoke, full of angst, liverwort and beer and hopinglike hell that no one would sit next to me. It felt good to retreat into my emotional cocoon within the safe shell of the rattling express, watching the countryside beyond the window become ever more familiar as the seamless suburbs receded and the open spaces beckoned. At times like that, after the turbulence of the brazen city, it was good to let yourself sink into a void where doubtful sounds in your head were absorbed and overridden by the roar and steady cadences of steel on steel. "You're from Te Kuiti, aren't you?" the dapper man in a three-piece suit and with a briefcase on his lap asked. I didn't know how long he had been sitting next to me. How did he know I was from Te Kuiti? Was he an inspector? Then I remembered that for some reason I had booked a seat on the express. Normally you didn't have to do that as there were invariably plenty of spare seats midweek. I guess for some reason I really wanted to get out of town this time. Quit the city. Not take the chance of missing out on a seat. J Edgar Hoover in the three-piece had obviously seen my reservation tag above the window — Auckland-Te Kuiti. I was almost certainly either from Auckland or Te Kuiti, and Sinclair Swain had chosen wisely. Sinclair got to talking and I got to listening. In cultured tones he told me of his meanderings, how he hadn't held down a regular job in three years. He sold a bit of insurance but not much. Basically, he operated

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as a sophisticated sponge on the system making sure he spread himself thinly to avoid detection. The last I heard he was hobnobbing and hobo-ing across America, although some reports had him serving time in a Canadian prison.

Many Happy Returns

T

om was a circuitous thinker — or perhaps a bit simple. Once he asked :he ticket-seller for a return ticket. "Where to, sir?" the ticket-seller asked cheerily. "What?" Tom replied. "Where do you want a return ticket to?" "Here, of course," was Tom's simple — or circuitous — answer.

Essentially Nuts and Bolts

M

erv was a consummate train enthusiast. His mind was like a steel trap when it came to remembering technical details about trains. He seemed to know every nut and bolt on every engine, every flange and convection valve. He could identify steam engines simply by listening to the nuances of their whistles. It must be admitted that while Merv's knowledge was impressive, it became a little daunting and just a tad boring — particularly for those who did not share his clenched obsession. Once Merv was asked what the Vulcan railcars were like to ride on, at a time when the questioner was interested in travelling from Greymouth to Westport, a happy hunting ground for such vehicles. "Vulcan-Frischs", Merv began. "Built in England in 1939-40. Top

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speed 75mph. Rm 54 probably. Has given outstanding service. Re-engined once only..." Merv's staccato run-down continued as the questioner excused him self. He would miss his train if he waited for Merv to finish his account. It must also be admitted that Merv's knowledge, while specialised and encyclopedic, was essentially one-dimensional. He wasn't so concerned with matters such as environmental impact and the often symbiotic way railways meshed with natural phenomena, sometimes actually enhancing the landscape, or the way the massive steel viaducts spanning ravines were able to facilitate the passage of humankind upon the earth's surface, while giving the impression they were meant to be there — that they were part of the physical environment itself. Nor was he interested in the way tunnels left the landscape unscarred or how the stately portals took on the appearance of something as natural as the Punakaiki rocks or Moeraki boulders. No, Merv was essentially a nuts and bolts man — an engine buff in the purest sense. They say of dog owners that sometimes they come to resemble their dogs. Jack O'Connor, for instanc e, actually looked — and barked — like his bulldogs. Merv too took on the appearance of his favourite pets: he actually looked a bit like a Kb engine. Of bulky build, his Elvis Presley pompadour protruded above his eyes like a Kb's headlights. He smoked a short, bulbous pipe which gave off copious choking smoke, like a Kb tackling the climb up to Otira. Sometimes he even sounded like a Kb, clearing his throat continually as he punctuated his technical rambles on everything you needed to know — or didn't need to know — about his beloved engines.

Big Brother is Watching

B

ack in 1933 the General Manager of NZ Railways had at his disposal a six-cylinder, petrol-driven, inspection car on rails. As if to signify its intentions, the car was painted blood red and came to be known as the "Red Terror". It was a macabre symbol of a more draconian age.

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Chapter 18

Off the Beaten Track Wet Chickens at Clarence

L

ivestock, both big and small, used to travel by train on a regular basis and in regulation wagons. Once a consignment of chickens was loaded at Blenheim in the course of a lengthy, hot journey to Kaikoura. The state of the Picton-Christchurch line was such that there was never any guarantee the train would not be delayed by slips and line closures in general. The would-be receiver of the consignment of chickens was particularly concerned that his cargo not be damaged by delay or mishap. On ringing the station he did not have his mind put at rest by the reply: "No problems with your chickens, Sir. We gave them a wash at Clarence." Which seemed somewhat bizarre. They were — or had been — frozen chickens.

Vulcan Burnout

R

eports of the rapidly-aging vulcan railcars had been around for a while when I boarded a Picton-bound service at Christchurch station in 1967. The old vulcans had given sterling service, it was said, but mechanically they were past it. As the Picton-bound vulcan pulled out of Christchurch station its apparent jauntiness was a comfort. We settled back and prepared ourselves for one of the more pictures que train journeys in New Zealand. The people on board the vulcan were chatty and relaxed, even when wisps of dusty smoke—or was it smoky dust—rose from the vibrating floor wells around the carriage door. "Happens all the time," an elderly knitter remarked between purl and plain. "This is my first time," I volunteered as the railcar throbbed out through the northern suburbs of Christchurch: Fendalton with its veneer

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of graciousness; Bryndwr, where you'd expect to find slag heaps and cold rows of miners' houses; Papanui; Styx — not really out in the sticks; Belfast, with its freezing works — where you wouldn't expect to find Fendaltonians. Sun filled the carriage. The shafts of sunlight cut through the everwelling dust and smoke emissions from beneath the railcar floor. "Happens all the time," I comforted myself. We crossed the Waimakariri and reached our first stop at Kaiapoi. Elderly women climbed aboard, chattering animatedly. The railcar made a strange mechanical sigh as it found its gear and weaved off along the straight before curving into Rangiora. Soon the old vulcan was swaying northwards again. A hot metallic smell pervaded, eventually complemented by an electrical smell — and a series of graunches. Engine knocks set their rhythm by the clack-clack of the wheels over the gaps between lines, but soon the knocks lost their rhythm and the passengers looked anxiously at one another. The guard, a very tall man, tried hard to remain jovial, but as the engine knocks and electrical-metallic odours intensified he became thoughtful. At Amberley the railcar drifted into the platform and the driver shut down the engine. Two old women boarded the vulcan in high spirits, quite oblivious to the fact that, for the moment anyway, the railcar wasn't going anywhere. The engine was restarted and soon Amberley was behind us. Just this side of Goose Bay the vulcan screamed once — a sharp, metal-searing cry — and came to a shuddering halt. Dust and smoke billowed from beneath the vestibule. The very tall guard suggested that we passengers take advantage of the "possibly considerable delay". Just beyond the tracks Goose Bay stretched away towards the north. The late morning sun danced off the quiet, lapping waters. The lack of surf was remarkable considering this was the wide open Pacific. Was the ocean afflicted with the same torpid malaise that had rendered the railcar a smoking, gibbering heap? Was it the South Island factor - the laid-back nature of life forces, the slower pace of existence this far south of Cook Strait? While the vulcan smoked on the track and the driver and guard steamed and fussed around the reluctant railcar, a motley group ambled down to the beach, dazzled and drawn by the bright sun over the Pacific.

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Time passed. The disgraced vulcan continued to smoke. The guard wandered down to make the solemn announcement: "We could be here for some time, folks." The authorities were arranging to send a bus from Rangiora but not until some judicious juggling with schedules was undertaken. It was a beautiful day. We sat on the warm sands and gazed out across the gentle rollers of Goose Bay. A discarded, driftwood cricket-wicket stood in the sand half-way down the beach. A roughly-hewn cricket bat leaned against a log. Someone found a tennis ball and, as the steady clankclank of the driver's spanner against an errant, vulcan gearbox continued, a spontaneous game of beach cricket evolved. Time passed. The North Island (me, three farmers from Marton and a Massey Univer sity student called Jane) whacked up 100 runs for three wickets. The South Island bowlers (a stock agent from Gore, a mother of two from Oamaru and two gangling youths of indeter minate age and origin) extracted little life from the gentle, warm sands. The sun reached its zenith. Stomachs began talking. Normally we would have had a pie and rock cake at Kaikoura by now. Someone produced a string of pork sausages and it was suggested that an im promptu barbecue be assembled. There was plenty of dry driftwood to choose from. As the sausages sizzled and the cricket chirped along, and time passed, the unscheduled day at the beach turned idyllic. People waded in the warm water. When the stock agent from Gore hit another six into the sea to bring up his fifty, the ball was playfully retrieved by one of the elderly

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women — Cardy we called her — who had been paddling in the gentle surf and talking to no one in particular. When the bus from Rangiora eventually arrived nobody seemed terribly keen to take his seat. The guard was just getting into his elongated stride bowling from the Kaikoura end. The gangling youths were plunging like porpoises through the swells of Goose Bay. As the bus pulled out and we resigned ourselves to a boring, bouncing road journey to Picton, the vulcan was left abandoned — burned-out in spirit. Shadows lengthened across the tracks.

Branch Line Pilgrimage

R

eg, an acquaintance from Auckland, became fascinated by rail travel late in the piece. It was only after he had accompanied his grandson on a rail excursion to Rotorua that he realised there was a much-neglected network of branch lines out there waiting to be discovered. A sense of panic set in when Reg realised that passenger services were being withdrawn at an alarming rate. He was envious of the old-timers who used to chat about train journeys on the old Little River branch in the South Island or the Cambridge branch in the north, services that had been withdrawn years ago. He went particularly green when he heard old-timers speak so casually of their daily grind over the Rimutaka incline. They made it sound as though it were just a job — another day at the office. Still there was no use pining over the closed branch lines, Reg decided, as he set out on his pilgrimage to cover as much of the surviving network as he could before the axe came down. Starting out from Bluff he travelled on the branch up to Invercargill, sharing the carriage with freezing workers and aluminium smelters. Already several of the Southland branches had closed to passenger traffic and, God knows, the Roxburgh line was a dead end, but the Central Otago service from Alexandra still carried passengers down to Dunedin. And there were still suburban services out to Port Chalmers on the Port Chalmers branch. Out on the West Coast Reg was just in time to catch the Westport-Greymouth railcar. In more ways than one. It was withdrawn soon after Reg's return journey. The West Coast railcar service to Ross was still available. At first Reg was going to call it quits

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at Hokitika, but he was glad he stayed with the train all the way to the railhead at Ross. Reg figured he could have always come back in a couple of years to complete the Hokitika-Ross run, but in that time the RossHokitika connection was closed down and ripped up. And so the pilgrimage continued. Reg travelled hundreds of miles of surviving passenger service tracks, but often he could merely pine for the might-have-beens. Sometimes he would drive along roads adjacent to the defunct branches. It was the next best thing. It meant travelling by road from Seddonville to Westport, via Ngakawau and Granity, keeping pace with the coal trains and wishing there could be a passenger car for frustrated train buffs like him. There were times when Reg actually walked along the disused tracks or tramped along the formations and embankments where the rails had long been uplifted. Like a spurned tom-cat Reg felt he had to put his mark on the old tracks and earthworks. It made his pilgrimage more complete. The old Nelson branch, which had collapsed in controversy so many years ago, still retained enough physical evidence of the line's path and Reg, a lonely figure, traipsed along the route once trundled by the steam-train passenger services. The level-crossing sign in a paddock at Spring Grove on the Nelson branch served as a rallying point in this respect. It assumed shrinelike proportions for an aficionado like Reg. And so on up to the North Island where long abandoned formations, like those to Moutuhora north of Gisborne, survived in sufficiently sharp relief to give a glimpse of the past. Reg even found that it was possible to walk along a section of the old route of the Rimutaka Incline, up through the gorse-choked cuttings, hearing the wind howl - almost hearing the chuffing Fell engines. By the time he reached the far north he was feeling a little dispirited. So many train-travel opportunities had passed him by. However, Reg was overjoyed to find that the lines of Northland still featured passenger services, albeit run-down token gestures. Mind you, it was preferable to travel up the main street of Kawakawa by steam-hauled mixed goods than by car or shanks's pony. And when Reg discovered that he had arrived in time to catch one of the last passenger services to Dargaville on the Northern Wairoa, it was the icing on his three-month-long pilgrimage cake.

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Chapter 19

Southern Ramblings North on the Southerner

K

en Strang of Sandringham was travelling on the Southerner when he realised his travelling companions were not locals. As the train swung away from the northern suburbs of Dunedin, he picked up ripples of an American accent rising above the noise of the train. Ken had had a few encounters with Americans on trains. In general he found them generous if voluble. He also knew that if you didn't acknowledge their presence they would go out of their way to make themselves visible to you. Best to get it over with, Ken thought, as he turned to acknowledge the existence of the Americans. "You're not New Zealanders, are you?" Ken asked rhetorically. "Why no, Sir. In fact we're from Boise, Idaho — that is myself— and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Arnold P Fairbrother and this is my wife, Leonore Fairbrother. Fairbrother by marriage I might add. She is more Fairsister, don't ya think, buddy?" Arnold laughed uproariously as the Southerner began to shelve away from Port Chalmers. Ken braced himself for the mandatory slap on the back, an American custom that usually accompanied a remark not altogether funny, being deployed mainly to promote bonhomie. Across the aisle more Americans were following the conversation with an intensity suggesting that they too would soon be part of the repartee. "Allow me to introduce our good travelling companions — Ira and Iris Goldstein from Schenectady, New York State. Ira's in industrial hoses." Ken was not sure at first whether Ira Goldstein was wearing heavy duty, medically-aligned socks, but he soon realised that Ira and his company were responsible for the installation of 67 per cent of all industrial reticulation in Albany, New York. "It's not strictly plumbing, you understand," Arnold enjoined. Ken had wondered about that as the Southerner began its spectacular climb around the headland near the Waitati River mouth. From the train

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the white plumes of the incoming Pacific looked like tufts of fleecy clouds. It was like flying at 30 thousand feet looking down on the cloud cover. The scene was awesome. Ken wanted to drink in its splendour. "Can we buy you a drink, buddy? What'll it be? Bourbon, scotch on the rocks...?" "Beer," Ken barked before returning his attention to the scenery. Arnold P Fairbrother, sensing that Ken was not altogether enamoured of his approach and was, in fact, denying good, old-fashioned Yankee hospitality, began to tense up. "Where you from anyway, fella?" he probed, a certain tightness in his delivery. Ken didn't answer directly. He was absorbed by the fragments of history being peeled back by the passage of the Southerner. He had never travelled on this stretch of line before. It was the old New Zealand: Dunedin, Port Chalmers and, as the Southerner climbed hard across the hill-country, the abandoned Seacliff mental hospital, still brooding over the boiling Pacific far below. And then the parapets above Waitati. "You from around these parts then boy?" The American was getting a mite testy as Ken drew measurably on his plastic glass of lager, kindly donated by the man in industrial hoses and related reticulation. The town of Karitane, another famous New Zealand name. Ken halfexpected most buildings to be yellow — Karitane yellow. Here was the town that had given its name to the Karitane hospital movement, living proof that Kiwis, of the post-war years anyway, cherished and cared for their young more than any other nation on earth. More than the Yanks who had no problems stepping over kids sleeping in the streets of New York, LA, Boise, Idaho, Schenectady, New York. The Americans had gone not so much quiet as sullen. "What's with this train anyway fella? They call it the God-damn Southerner and yet we're heading north if I'm not mistaken. It's damn disorientating if you know what I mean. My wife suffers from vertigo and this situation can't be doing her the world of good." Ken felt like pointing out that the wife seemed to be enjoying the sheer elevation overlooking the Waitati Rjver mouth, and anyway the northbound Southerner didn't actually go straight up in the air. The northsouth axis wasn't that direct. The curvature of the earth — and the South Island — saw to that.

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"Another beer, boy?" At least he was generous although Ken could see that he would not go away until some sort of reciprocation had been offered. In the meantime it would keep him in beer, until that reciprocation was consummated.

The Southerner coasted into a siding at Waikouiti where the public address system announced a ten-minute delay, while the corresponding Southerner — the one that really was a Southerner — crossed. Ken saw the break as an opportunity to dissipate the mounting unease. Perhaps the Americans would find some fellow passengers to return the affability that had fallen on Ken's muted senses, perhaps a couple from Kalamazoo, Michigan who were in fibre optics. Ken looked out across the tussock-flecked flats. To one side he could see the jerry-built barracks of Cherry Farm hospital; towards the coast the wind parted the tall grasses, revealing sand-dunes. Gradually he became aware of an old man staring at him as he flinched against the rising wind. "Don't tell me," the old man said in his distinctively Windsor accent. "Don't tell me, Sir. Let me guess." Ken decided to say nothing. "You're not American are you?" The old man must have been privy to the verbal shenanigans on the train. "You're not Australian either." Ken felt relieved. "You're Dutch. That's what you are."

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Ken felt motivated to reply. "I'm from New Zealand," he defended. "There you are, Zealand. I told you so. I'm not usually wrong in these matters." Whereupon the elderly Englishman hobbled away to rejoin the Southerner, as the real Southerner — the one heading south — passed on the main line. Ken, his xenophobia resurfacing, needed the companionship of fellow kiwis. He sought refuge and sustenance in the buffet car where he put in a request for meat pie and vegetables. It wasn't the done thing to go for pie, peas and potatoes any more. "G'day mate," a voice drawled from the adjacent stool. Ken had been hoping for a Gore farmer or a Christchurch industrialist, perhaps even a Dunedin academic. "I'm from Leeverpule, mate. Leeverpule, Seedney," the Australian twanged. "So far I've been hee, hee, hee and hee." The Australian pointed to a map of the South Island as he made these strange vocal pronouncements. After bolting his meal Ken returned to the carriage where the Americans were talking in wild innuendo and inflated figures. "Ah, there you are buddy. We figured you'd jumped ship. Figured you didn't appreciate us Yanks that much, huh? Am I right, fella?" Ken could sense the welling antipathy towards him. His kiwi reticence had been interpreted as something deeply anti-American, procommunist, anti-industrial hoses. Quite unbidden (the free beer may have had something to do with it), Ken finally went on the attack. "I've been to Hell and back," he announced, slugging back the last of the free beer. The Americans sat slack-jawed and silent. "We had no idea, young man. Why didn't you say so, fella? We could have lived with that. Right, Ira — Iris? You wanna tell us about it, son?" Ken returned his gaze to the sea-girt expanse beyond Shag Point and Katiki as the Southerner angled inland towards the hill country south of Hampden. "Have a Jack Daniels and spill the beans, boy. You're amongst friends here." Ken nipped at the complimentary bourbon as the train passed Herbert. "It's quite simple really," he began. "I have recently returned from an overseas trip to Britain and the Continent, during the course of which a couple of mates and I utilised the quite magnificent rail systems of Norway." The Americans nodded mutely. "At one stage — north of Trondheim I believe it was — we stopped at

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a place called Hell, which is Norwegian for something or other, and rather than go all the way to Bodo within the Arctic circle, which seemed like one hell of a journey, we returned directly to Oslo." The Americans drained their glasses. Arnold P Fairbrother burst into a cacophonous guffaw which diverted everyone's attention. He slapped Ken the Kiwi's back with such gusto that Jack Daniels flew through the air. Soon all the Americans were chuckling, and US-NZ relations took a giant step sideways.

Low-Flying Tractors

H

igh winds don't usually disrupt the flow of rail traffic although the Rimutaka incline had its share of dramas. In 1975 the South Island main trunk was disrupted by gale-force zephyrs that saw telephone poles topple and hundreds of line-side trees block the path of trains. Just south of Orari station in South Canterbury a southbound goods train was in difficulties thanks to the wind playing tricks with a stand of towering pine trees. One of the trees was buckled over by the wind and came down on a wagon carrying a new tractor. As the wind blast eased the old pine righted itself, taking the tractor with it. Speculation mounted regarding the phenomenon of a tractor sitting half-way up a pine tree. Could tractors fly? Several bystanders figured they had come across a light plane crash, with the plane's wings having sheered off further down the track. Investigations revealed that the object was in fact a tractor and, as the responsibility of NZ Railways, it behoved the track gang to do their best to retrieve it. The old pine tree was cut down, thus freeing the tractor which fell headlong and broke neatly into two sections, neither of which was much use to the farmer awaiting delivery.

Ashburton Underground

A

rather grandiose proposal was put forward in the mid 1970s to divert the railway through Ashburton underground. Feasibility studies were suggested by various town fathers but the notion, understandably, never got off (or under) the ground.

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Fly-by-nighters

F

red Cornes was sick and tired of finding someone in his seat on the overnight express when it pulled into Oamaru at some ungodly hour in the morning. Fred always went to the troubled of making a reservation from Oamaru to Invercargill, but that didn't stop fly-by-nighters — those who hadn't booked — occupying his seat. Trouble was the fly-by-nighters probably had good intentions of vacating the seat when the express pulled into Oamaru, but by that time most passengers had succumbed to sleep and could not be held responsible for such illegal occupanc y. Some people could be downright cranky when jostled out of a deep sleep. Once Fred found an eighteen-stone Cantabrian dead to the world in his reserved seat and, after a great deal of undignified pushing and shoving, the eighteen-stoner lunged at Fred with a half-snore, half-roar, before lumbering down the aisle to find a vacant seat in the next carriage. Fred decided to become more assertive the next time he travelled on the Express to Invercargill. Fortified by an early morning dram or two he charged into carriage D-Smoking, quickly pin-pointed his reserved seat and pushed aggressively at the inevitable seat-squatter. To Fred's undying shame and embarrassment he found he had stumbled into the wrong carriage and the passenger he was jostling had every right to occupy seat 7B. Luckily for Fred, this time the Cantabrian concerned was closer to eight than eighteen stone. Nonetheless he tiptoed very quietly away towards carriage B-Smoking. Fred was so traumatised by these encounters that he made it his policy to wait for the guard to referee altercations. It would be the guard's duty to evict any eighteen — or eight — stone overstayer. In fact, Fred wondered why the guard didn't police such matters more stringently long before Oamaru was reached. Before it became a problem. Then there was the time Fred thought he had found the guard sleeping in his reserved seat, and he decided to rest his case. And therein lies another story. On another occasion, while travelling on the Limited, Fred found he had grabbed the wrong suitcase in his haste to make it to the station. He and his brother had cases of similar shape and colour, but while Fred was a staunch train buff his brother was more into motorbikes. The case on Fred's lap was full of bike parts and blue overalls.

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Chapter 20

Rendering Assistance Lost in the Translation

T

he influx of tourists travelling on New Zealand trains in recent years was a recent phenomenon. The numbers were smaller in the days when Rudi Schmidt travelled. Rudi — or "Bull" as we called him — was Austrian by birth and a global train-traveller by choice. I first encountered him while travelling on the Midland line railcar, in the days before the TranzAlpine made its appearance.

Unlike many European tourists "Bull" Schmidt did not have a good mastery of English, a lack which led to some interesting situations as he came face to face with New Zealanders who had an inadequate appreciation of German. 116

Mind you, I could recall with shame my first encounter with things German when visiting the buffet car on a Munich-Vienna service. I was as hungry as a Kiwi between a rock cake and a hard place. German is a longwinded tongue and, for a malnourished New Zealander, a considerable obstacle when all you want to see in front of you is a simple reference to fish and chips, steak and eggs or pies, peas and potatoes. I should have taken a punt on the pumpernickel, but in the end I plumped for the Munchen-Wien. After an anguished silence between the waiter and me, during which time I did not mention the war, the kindly gentleman informed me that I had ordered a helping of the train's route of passage printed at the top of the menu. He pointed to something unpronounceable towards the middle of the menu and I nodded in German. Almost immediately I received a thankfully recognisable serving of meat balls and sauerkraut. As I wolfed the sustenance I delved into my English-German translation book with my free eye. A working, if basic, knowledge of the local lingo was a pre-requisite for survival. Meanwhile, "Bull" Schmidt was not unduly troubled by his lack of English. He revelled in the scenery of the Midland line, that incredible feat of engineering that took the train from Christchurch across the Canterbury Plains, up the foothills of the Southern Alps, along the braided course of the Waimakariri River, through the five-mile-long Otira tunnel and down the other side of the Alps into the wet netherworld of Westland. Intriguing, half-enchanted place-names like Cass, Cora Lynn, Staircase, Inchbonnie and Stillwater appeared on station hoardings. Bull was transported by the train - in more ways than one. The alpine aspect of the Midland line was reminiscent of much of his homeland. "Like home, ya," Bull announced, punctuating his utterance with a sweep of his hand towards the towering, snow-capped alps. It was Bull's first piece of English, or the first that we had been able to identify. Even then it was garbled. I thought he had said "Just like Rome", a strange assumption on my part as the landscape outside the carriage bore no resemblance at all to Rome. Very few colosseums and no traffic snarls. Still, it sparked off some kind of conversation between us and in reply I stuck with the Roman theme. "When in Rome, eh Rudi?" The Austrian looked blankly at me before

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returning his gaze to the scenic wonders unfolding outside the window. I tried again. "Rome wasn't built in a day, Bull." "Nor was Nome, "offered a fellow traveller from Alaska. Bull Schmidt remained thoughtful, lost in the translation, as the railcar climbed the Cass bank. Bull was also a bit of a pipe-smoker in days when such incendiary devices were permitted in the smoking section of the railcar. He smoked a brand of tobacco that was foreign to us, literally. It had a pleasant aroma, particularly when he first lit up at Rolleston, but by the time we stopped at Arthur's Pass for refreshments it had assumed composty overtones. Bull had no pipe-cleaners and his pipe badly needed a bit of a sluice-out. Bull also had no knowledge of the word "pipe-cleaner", and when he approached the refreshment rooms at Arthur's Pass he resorted to sign language. "Please," he said as he wedged his right index finger into the aperture created by the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. "Please, danke," he repeated as the woman attendant's mouth dropped and fear masked her face. Bull's finger gesture - a basic form of sign language adequately represented for him the function of a pipe cleaner when it is in the process of cleaning a pipe. Most railway refreshment-room attendants were broad-minded, but if you didn't know that Bull was an Austrian pipe-smoker who didn't speak much English, you would swear he was making improper suggestions. The woman was about to scream, as Bull continued giving his ever more frantic impression of a pipe-cleaner as the railcar was set to depart. I regret to say that the situation didn't dawn on me as quickly as it did on the Alaskan bound for Stillwater. The latter acted with great diplomacy and speed to prevent an international incident. As he explain ed the situation to the attendant the colour returned to her face, and with great relief she produced a packet of pipe-cleaners from the tobacco rack. We moved smartly back to the departing railcar and resumed our seats. Bull didn't bother with his pipe for the rest of the journey. I guess he figured that pipes — certainly pipe-cleaners — were on the edge of the law in New Zealand. We mentioned neither the war nor pipe-cleaners as the railcar rattled and swayed into Stillwater, where Bull and the Alaskan bid farewell and disappeared into the driving rain.

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Stops at All Stations - and Then Some

T

he old rural "stops-at-all-stations" railcar was very much a part of the backblocks community it served. The rural railcar operated during an era in New Zealand's history when life seemed simpler and people tended to care a bit more for one another. On these services it was not uncommon for passengers to receive individual treatment. "Go up and sit by the driver, son," a kindly guard said to a schoolboy travelling home for the weekend on the Christchurch-Greymouth railcar. "You can tell the driver where your parents' farm is and he can set you down right by the gate."

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Chapter 21

Moon Travel, Flying and other Southern Tales '::

Returning from the Moon

T

he "Queenstown Connection" introduced by NZ Rail, whereby passengers can travel from Christchurch to Queenstown, is deceptive in rail-link terms. To travel by train all the way from Christchurch to Queenstown would be a rail hobbyist's dream, but the new Queenstown Connection involves travelling from Christchurch to Dunedin on the "Southerner", transferring to the Taeiri Gorge train as far as Pukerangi on the former Central Otago line and then catching a Pacific Tourways bus for a four-hour road journey to Queenstown. The connection of course operates the other way as well, conveying the traveller from Queenstown to Christchurch. At least when a mate and I travelled on the "Queenstown Connection" we covered more rail miles, by dint of the fact that a longer stretch of the Central Otago line was still operational. Admittedly, we too took a bus from Queenstown to the old rail-head at Alexandra, but the connection was more a genuine rail link back then. Back then. 1971. Mid-winter. My mate and I bunked down in an old stone bed-and-breakfast arrangement overlooking the Clutha River and, more specifically, the impressive stone arches of the abandoned rail bridge. Phantom Bridge we called it, as the ramparts thrust up through the circling mist. It was a cold, central night. To light-travelling North Islanders, to whom a pair of long-Johns would appear to be two very deep toilets, the air was lip-wincingly cold. We retired early, as much to keep warm as to be prepared for our early-morning call. E The Central Otago railcar departed Alexandra very early, and as we struggled out of bed we were agreeably surprised by the warmth of the day — or dawning. Mind you, the oil-fired heating had a lot to do with it. We

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shared the breakfast table in the bright and bustling kitchen with three other guests, one of whom was introduced to us as Sam. The ruddy-faced Sam was dressed up as a train-driver. He regarded us somewhat warily as he lifted his face from his plate of savoury mince on toast. "I hear you blokes are travelling on the railcar." We nodded as the hot mince seared the insides of our mouths. "Why do that, lads? Wouldn't it be easier to get the 9.30 bus?" "We like trains. We've never travelled on the Central line before." Sam grunted with self-satisfaction and continued shovelling mince into his mouth like a steam-train fireman feeding the firebox. "You jokers may as well come with me to the station. I'm your driver." We followed Sam outside into the pre-dawn darkness, the cold air finding every hole in my teeth as I made an involuntary gasp. "Off to the moon then, boys," said Sam cheerfully as we crunched through the frost. We weren't entirely sure what Sam meant, and his smirk suggested that he knew we didn't entirely know. "Dunedin, actually," my mate replied. His voice had risen an octave, probably because of the cold. "Good place Dunedin. Watch out for those students though. They're everywhere." We nodded and then noticed that we were nodding with our entire bodies. The cold was such that we were shivering uncontrollably. "Not so cold this morning, chaps," Sam proffered as he headed off towards the vulcan railcar standing in the early morning shadows. Heavy deposits of frost covered its roof and icicles hung from the windows. In the half-light the vulcan looked two-tone, dark something with a white roof. Sam took ten minutes to get the railcar spluttering into some sort of action, during which time we huddled on the platform, shaking. Station staff ambled into position and began organising their day. "Not so cold this morning, fellas," the ticket-seller said as our shaking hands parted with a sum of money that was more than fair. Despite the cold, the prospect of travelling on the Central Otago line for the first time, to go where neither of us young lads had been before, to start out in the middle of nowhere and plunge into uncharted territory, had its own rewards. We felt we should be paying three times the amount NZR was asking.

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"From the North Island, eh," the ticket-seller quipped as we continued to shake uncontrollably. "Sam'll have the heaters going soon." Sam was true to the ticket-seller's word, and as the railcar roared through the gears away from Alexandra Station the palsy died and feeling began to return to our extremities. At least it wasn't so cold this morning. And we did get to find out about Sam's reference to the moon. Much of the Central Otago landscape took on a lunar aspect with its sweeping, yellow domes sprinkled with moon-like rocks, and when the line descended into the Taeiri River gorge it was not unlike descending into a lunar crater. Several years later a news item attested to the fact that the vulcan railcar was still operating the Alexandra-Dunedin run. It also proved that we had been well within our rights feeling a bit cold during certain stages of the journey: "When does abnormally cold weather cause an engine to overheat? In the case of the vulcan railcar on the Alexandra-Dunedin service this occurred on July 24, 1975, when water in the railcar's radiator froze overnight. Several stops had to be made on the way to Dunedin because the frozen radiator caused the engine to overheat."

High Flyer

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n 1995 it was announced that the Kingston Flyer would star in a new movie based loosely on a Sherlock Holmes story. Most of the movie's action would take place on the vintage steam train. The allure of the Kingston Flyer is growing all the time. It is in constant demand for weddings and special dinners and breakfasts as well as its usual scheduled runs. Its season usually runs until Easter but in 1995 this was extended to May. Companies making advertisements have also realised the benefits of staging their shoots on the famous train, and to compound the demands more tourists are now riding on the Flyer. And yet, the future of the train in its present location had been in limbo due to tangled ownership wrangles. The fact that the train itself, the track it runs along and the land the track occupies are owned by different parties has made for difficulty in administering the service. It is enough to set off a wild shoot-out between parties — which could, of course, be staged on the Kingston Flyer.

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Train poachers have also been on the prowl. Because of the success of the Kingston Flyer concept, outside interest groups have been putting forward proposals to locate the operation closer to their respective homes. A group of Queenstown business people intends making application, and the Rotorua City Council has also put out feelers. Closer to the Flyer's home, a Marlborough group would like to see the train running between Blenheim and Picton. Perhaps it could be used on the Huntly to Hamilton run to reactivate interest in the concept of commuter train travel. It might just ease road traffic congestion on one of the most gruesome stretches of roadway in New Zealand.

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Somewhere Near the Middle of Middlemarch

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rom some angles a railway water-tower could be seen to resemble a swimming pool, certainly down Central Otago way where watering holes for kids were thin on the ground during late January, when the temperatures climbed into the 30s. The story goes, and its verification is open to debate, that on one particularly sweltering Saturday a bunch of kids climbed to the top of the tank and dived into the cool water. It was probably against the law, it was certainly unsafe and it obviously contravened railways policy. When a mid-afternoon passenger service chuffed along to use the tower the train crew and sundry bystanders showed little concern. Just so long as no one drowned, and one has to assume that this was the case, no one turned a hair.

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What's Good for Passenger Services Must Be Good for Goods.

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uccess breeds success. The popularity of the Kingston Flyer in the mid 1970s had an unexpected spin-off whereby goods traffic enjoyed an upturn in fortunes as well. Unlike most surviving branch lines which ran spasmodic goods services, the Kingston line, thanks to the Flyer, could offer more regular runs. Each morning and evening jaunt by the Kingston Flyer carried goods traffic, and in the off-season a regular goods service was maintained by a diesel-hauled train. Sometimes the Flyer could not accommodate all the available goods traffic and an additional goods service backed up as far as required. This spin-off was also seen to be the result of the district supporting its railway. The Kingston Flyer was a shot in the arm to a previously obsolescent, rural branch line.

Rare Railway Bird James K Backside must have joined the Central Otago railcar at Ranfurly. He had taken up residence in the vestibule, where I became aware of his shaggy presence when I left the carriage for the first time and was still there later when we were j us t this side of Hyde. We called the shaggy indi vidual James K Backside because of his unusual habit of reciting verse – blank mainly — to no one in particular and he did look a bit like James K Baxter, the renowned New Zealand poet. The guard, a chilblained chap, gave the rambling bard a wide berth. Besides, he had a ticket. "Bloodystudent," the guard mutteredas he passed through the vesti-

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bule, past the droning poet. Student! James K looked at least forty. He was no freshman; perhaps a post-graduate of long-standing — and even longer lying down, if the mud and grime on his tweeds were anything to goby. It became apparent that James recited tolerably well, although his fiery-red beard and moustache, streaked heavily with frost, grey and particles of rock cake, did not make for clarity. We developed a begrudging respect for the vestibuled fellow. Railway poets were rare birds, endangered species no less. There had been railway balladeers and poets holding court on trains of bygone eras, but they were picked off one by one as the heavy guns of conservatism and disinterest moved in. James K Baxter, the guru poet of the Jerusalem drop-out generation, was a figure of considerable controversy and towering poetic talent. But he took to the road. This other James took up station on trains, where he proved no less controversial and polarising. A group of moth-balled women edged past him very nervously as they joined the train at Middlemarch. School kids who used the railcar as a school bus poked their collective tongue out at him. We suspected that James was on his way to Dunedin city, where he would be swallowed up by the red-bearded hordes who made up much of the male population; Dunedin, where he would repair to a humble, central-city villa to continue work on his latest thin volume of verse, cradling a quart of whisky in front of a roaring Caledonian fire, within an empty bottle-hurl of the magnificent, grey-stone railway station. Somewhere beyond Middlemarch we realised James had left the railcar. We couldn't imagine where he had gone. Was there a garret out amongst the lunar rocks or a psychiatric hospital down one of the dusty roads? We knew there was a prison at Waipiata but James seemed light years away from that lifestyle. There were further intermittent sightings of the railway poet over the years, several of them on the West Coast and one or two on the Port Chalmers branch. However, he never developed cult status like James K Baxter or Sam Hunt, probably because he was very hard to hear in crashing, swaying vestibules.

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Finding the Geyserland

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lease where is train for Geyserland?" the Japanese tourist asked a bemused store owner at Frankton on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. "Where's Geyserland?" the store owner replied. "Ah, Rotorua," the tourist answered. "Ah, Lake Rotoroa," countered the store owner. "Ah," said the tourist doubtfully. "Lake Rotoroa's up near Nelson." "And train for Geyserland goes to Rotorua?" "No train through here mate." "This not Frankton?" "This is Frankton." "Why not train?" "Because no railway." "But where train for Geyserland to Rotorua from Frankton?" The Japanese tourist flapped a NZ Rail brochure at the store owner who was able to explain that, rather like Palmerston North and South, there were two Franktons - one in the North Island and one in the South. "Ah, wrong Frankton," the tourist chuckled. "Right, wrong Frankton," the store owner replied seriously.

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Chapter 22

Identity Crisis The Northerner that Went South V

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s New Zealand Railways introduced new passenger services in the 1970s they could have shown rather more originality in choosing names for the new trains. Name trains they called them. No more Express or Limited. However, with the appearance of the Blue Streak, Silver Fern and Silver Star came a certain amount of confusion. When friends from Wellington announced they would be arriving on the Silver Streak, it was difficult to know whether they would be on the Silver Star sleeper express or the Silver Fern daylight railcar. At least we knew they

wouldn't be on the Blue Streak which was now plying the WellingtonNew Plymouth run. The Blue Streak's livery was officially described as "zenith blue with alpine violet bands along the sides, replacing the standard red with silver flashes", a description which may or may not have aided identification.

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And then there were the Northerner that went south as well as north and the Southerner that went north as well as south.

Things that Go Crash in the Night and Day

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nce I was confronted with the problem of transferring a tape recorder from Wellington to Te Kuiti. There were a number of options, including sending it by slow post. When I suggested it could go by rail howls of outrage indicated that this was not a viable option. Bloody railways. They'll off-load the thing and despatch it to Dargaville or Invercargill or Cape Reinga. I knew railways stretched to Dargaville and Invercargill but I thought it unnecessary to mention that a line did not extend all the way to Cape Reinga — more's the pity. Eventually a welling flush of loyalty compelled me to entrust my taperecorder to NZ Railways. I figured that all the stories of shambolic handling and unprofessionalism were a pro-road-transit plot. I still had a residual loyalty to the system that had greeted me when I first became aware of my surroundings at age two or thereabouts; the system that provided us with so much pleasure, adventure and pride as we grew up in Te Ku iti on the main trunk line. Main trunk! It still stood for something. I felt sorry for people who were shackled to a branch line, particularly if it didn't loop on to a way out. That was no better than living on a no-exit road. Your options were limited somehow. Even worse off were those poor souls who lived nowhere within cooee of any kind of railway line. No, the main trunk and NZ Railways in general were still worthy of respect. My tape-recorder took two months to arrive from Wellington. I learned that it was sitting in the goods shed only after several convoluted phone calls. "Railways," a gruff voice exploded into the earpiece. "This is Graham Hutchins speaking. I was wondering if you have a parcel for me." An extended silence followed, after which strange noises, like rats gnawing at the network, filtered through. "Goods." Another gruff voice. "This is Graham Hutchins speaking. I was wondering if you might have a parcel for me." "What makes you think that?"

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"Well..." "You want parcels." This announcement was followed by a screaming, metallic sound like an Ab engine running over several phone lines at once. After five minutes' recovery time I tried again. "Railways." A different, high-pitched, gruff voice. "This is Graham Hutchins speaking..." "So." "Could you put me through to parcels please?" Norm at "parcels" was less gruff than most and was able to impart the information I sought. My tape-recorder was sitting in the parcels office, had been for five weeks and simply required someone to come in and uplift it on my behalf. I decided to uplift it on my own behalf, but when I saw the V-shaped package I recoiled. It looked as though a Ka drive wheel had gone right over the top of it. The tape-recorder, a heavy duty, cast-iron Phillips with the ability to absorb high levels of bass-guitar throb and any amount of physical pummellings, was a write-off. "You can always lodge a claim," the less-gruff Norm said as he reached for an ominously high pile of claim documents. The sight of my beloved, disembowelled, decapitated tape-recorder was so obscene that I was goaded into speech. "No wonder you buggers run at a loss." "Now look." "How could you buggers damage the Phillips so severely? It's as solid as concrete. To tell you the truth I only sent it by rail because I knew there wasn't a show in hell of anybody - not even the IRA - making any impression on it. It's not exactly bone china." Norm reacted by lighting up and putting his feet on the desk. "You won't be needing this then," he said, as he ripped the claims document in half. At that point NZ Railways, in my eyes, had reached its lowest ebb. It was nadir time. If I could lose so much faith, how much more would be lost by those members of the public who considered trains to be merely point A to B carriers of human cargo and NZ Railways in general as something you heard people complain about.

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Faddish Facades

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ou can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but then a sow's ear has a certain rugged beauty of its own, just like J engines in days prior to and subsequent to their being subjected to American-style streamlin ing. The J class always had a certain elegance compared to the big, bulbous Ks. If you had to genderise them the Js would have been the lady trains and the Ks the gentlemen. In the 1930s NZR became conscious of image in relation to its ruggedly-handsome and elegant steam main-liners. The Js were fitted with skyline casing and torpedo boiler fronts which changed their appearance markedly. The streamlining was copied from engines of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and tended to reflect a fad within society at the time — a desire to streamline everything and everybody. Cars, planes and people were all subjected to it. Women's fashion was touched by it. Men's hair was swept back to better facilitate their smooth passage through life. Streamlining of steam engines, in New Zealand anyway, became a hindrance to maintenance. Soot deposits had a field-day beneath the facades. Once World War 11 was out of the way a more utilitarian attitude prevailed and the Js and Ks of NZ Railways were stripped back to the bare essentials, which to many people had always looked better anyway.

Have a Nice Day

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n the mid-1960s NZ Railways introduced a new telephone-answering procedure in a move to improve public relations. Basically the new procedure encouraged the person answering the phone to present a friendlier image. Don't just say "hello". Give your name and designation. Say something about yourself and then enquire what you can do for the caller. After a while the new style became tedious and time-consuming, not to mention pretentious and embarrassing. Inevitably the satirists working for NZR had their say. One evening while a particular bookings clerk was busy selling tickets and otherwise occupied, the phone started ringing in the office. At the same time a member of the shunting crew entered

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the office and, noting that the bookings clerk was unavoidably detained, handled the call in the following manner: "Hello. I am Shorty Shaw, I am five-foot four, I have ten children and twenty-two grandchildren. What the hell is your problem?" The caller hung up.

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Chapter 23

Down on the Wet Coast Feeling Inclined

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ravelling on the miners' train from Greymouth to Rewanui, up the old Rewanui incline, was not only like travelling back in time, it was also like travelling up into another world. The rain that had been falling all week, lashed the Ww engine and its five carriages as they pulled out of Greymouth. Slowly the burden was hauled out over the swollen, heaving Grey River. The S-shaped Cobden rail-bridge groaned as the torrent raged. Debris buffeted the swaying bridge. Silty water lapped the line. I had the feeling that a sudden surge would catapult the bridge off its mountings and carry us out to sea. The coal miners were unconcerned. Thirteen of their cohorts had perished in the Strongman Mine disaster in recent times. Compared to that trauma and the constant danger hanging over their own every-day lives, drowning in the muddy Grey would not compare to entombment in the dusty, black chambers of the mines. On the way up the incline the gloomy carriages emphasised the haunted eyes of the miners. Despite the best intentions of soap and water, a residual rim of time-grimed dust shadowed their eyes. Or was it just the light — muted and flickering as mist clouds flitted past — giving rise to an optical illusion? The rain didn't let up once. The bush drooped under the sheer volume of water, culverts gushed and moisture worked its way into everything. Even our tickets were limp when we handed them over to the raincoated guard. On the way back down the incline the train skidded to a stop several miles from its destination. Miners began leaving the train. We were parked on a steep stretch of line in the middle of the bush and the rain, if anything, had increased in intensity. We sat in the half-empty carriage for some time before the guard announced that a culvert had washed out just down the track. We were welcome to stay with the train although

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we might like to take the course of action adopted by the more intrepid miners, who were walking back to Greymouth. The thought of crossing the swaying Cobden Bridge on foot was even more daunting than the prospect of being soaked to the skin while clambering along the raingouged ballast. Eventually, as darkness descended, the incline train eased into Greymouth station and we went looking for shelter. Despite our wetweather gear and decision to stay out of the rain, moisture dripped off the end of our noses, even when we were safely installed in one of the several Greymouth pubs across the road from the station. As we sat at the

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horseshoe bar we recognised several faces from the miners' train — solemn, haunted and silent. The barman, with a measured sweep of his beer hose, refilled the seven-ounce glasses with a mud-hewed brew that looked as though it had been pumped directly out of the swollen Grey. Condensate oozed down the walls. Meanwhile, the Ww whistle, strident through the rain, announced to the next shift of miners that the long, slippery haul up to Rewanui was due to begin. In the mid-1970s what we had figured might happen came to pass. The public discovered the appeal and novelty of travelling up a steep, bush-fringed branch line to an outpost coal-mine. More people got wind of the Rewanui incline and were prepared to pay 52 cents to travel on the 1.45pm train from Greymouth, spend half an hour at the mine and arrive back in Greymouth just after 3.30. The service became so popular that in subsequent summers the afternoon miners' trains were continued right through the holidays, even when the mines were closed. Such trains often consisted of five carriages with barely a spare seat.

All Part of the Service some NZR services looked after their passengers cannot be T hat doubted if the items that emerged from the engine cab on the Reefton to Westport train were anything to go by. Babies' bottles were returned from their nook next to the boiler, reheated babyfood bubbled by the firebox and dried nappies were taken down from the whistle cord and handed back to grateful mothers. The "nursery special" might have been an appropriate name for the service, although when a large newspaper parcel of reheated fish and chips was released to the ravenous hordes, as the engine sat snorting at Inangahua Junction, it was apparent that all age groups were catered for.

Right Place, Wrong Train

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hen it wasn't raining in Hokitika, cricket was a popular pastime in post-war days. Post-match drinking was just as popular, and many triumphs in the field or with bat and ball were celebrated with

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lashings of amber fluid. The day a retailer from Ross scored a century was a case in point. By the time the homeward-bound train was ready to leave the station he was in no fit state to steal quick singles. In fact, he could barely stand. Still in his batting pads, bat in hand, he was rushed down to the station by members of the local club to catch the "twenty-past" service. With all due haste, for the guard had already blown his whistle, several Hokitika cricketers somehow secured the century-maker to the train. The latter was doing his best to return to the after-match festivities, and it was no mean feat for the Hokitika cricketers to be able to stand back from the fracas finally and announce that the retailer from Ross was definitely on his way home. Then the train pulled out of the station — going the wrong way. The century-maker was on his way back to Greymouth. It was a remarkable conclusion to a cricketing day of days.

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Chapter 24

Bottom Line Abandoned Engine

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he main trunk out of Dunedin skirts the Carisbrook rugby grounds in such a way that passengers and train crews have a magnificent view of what is happening, particularly if the train is scheduled to skirt Carisbrook at the time of the denouement of an important rugby match. Over the years there have been reports of drivers suddenly developing engine trouble on the Carisbrook bank with subsequent delays, some of which lasted for forty minutes — or the duration of the second half of a rugby match. While the train crew could become involved in developments at Carisbrook, the kudos for the most-involved train-driver in a rugby match belongs to the character who used to abandon his engine on the line and, on one famous occasion, participated in forty minutes of rugby. The driver was in charge of an engine returning with a shunt service to a local limeworks. The limeworks was located at the end of a spur line that saw very little traffic anyway. The spur ran so close to the local rugby park that it virtually bisected the dead-ball line. The driver, a nippy halfback, nipped away while his Ab waited patiently just beyond the in-goal area. It cannot be said that the train driver/half-back performed heroically behind the Old Boys forwards. He seemed somewhat distracted at times, with one of his up-and-unders looping off the side of his boot and nearly going down the funnel of the Ab. A bad case of pricked conscience or, as later reports suggest, a torn hamstring, which made climbing back into the cab of the Ab a twenty-minute ordeal.

The Bottom Line

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t was south of Dunedin somewhere on a night cold enough to freeze the monkeys off a frieze. A rugby team was lubricating itself in celebration of a game well won. In keeping with one of the customs of

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the day a high-spirited loose forward dropped his drawers and presented his posterior to the great outdoors. The toasty warmth inside the carriage was disturbed by an icy blast directly off the Alps, so severe that the loose forward lost all feeling in his extremities. At the same time the carriage rattled through crossing points and the window jammed shut, wedging the hapless forward in a most uncompromising position. The primitive ritual, known as "brown eyeing" had backfired badly. Designed to shock anyone who might receive an eyeful the "brown-eyer" on the Dunedin-Invercargill express, flying across the snow-flecked reaches of South Otago, might offend a few ice-bound sheep. What else did he have in mind? A bus-load of vigilant nuns keeping pace with the train? A passing train of town mothers returning from a Presbyterian conference in Balclutha? While all this was going on the rest of the team huddled around the guitarist and sang loud, adenoidal versions of the type of song that lubricated rugby teams sing ad infmitum. "Don't it make my brown eyes blue", one of the favourites of the day, suddenly took on new meaning, reflecting the plight of the blue-tailed loose forward as the express hammered out the miles. "Throw him off at Benhar," someone suggested, which seemed appropriate. Benhar, the small town served by the South Island main trunk, was best known for a most distinctive industry - toilet manufacturing.

Pulling the Wool

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n the early days of rail at Invercargill there was precious little storage space for goods waiting to be railed out of the district. The wool season in particular produced a difficult situation with countless wool bales being stacked on the station platform prior to being shifted south to Bluff for shipment. Passengers had to do their best to make their presence known, as the tiers of bales obscured even the tallest man. Often a circuitous sprint around the bales was necessary in order that a particular passenger service be caught. Children were known to get lost in the temporary maze, much to the consternation of mothers, who mouthed strong opinions about the need for more adequate storage facilities. 138

Relief Steam

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team engines were nothing if not versatile. In the winter of 1974, when the Alliance Freezing Works at Invercargill ran out of steam because of the late delivery of a new, high-capacity boiler, the Ferrymead Railway Museum in Christchurch kindly donated their big Kb 968 steam engine to help out. After the engine was towed to Invercargill and fitted with a 30-foot extension to its funnel to improve draughting in the absence of exhaust, steam in sufficient quantities to run the works was soon on stream. The 30-foot funnel extension was a bit of a worry though. It gave rise to a level of mirth, most of it less than sophisticated. And imagine such an apparition steaming on the North Island main trunk. It most certainly would not have made it through the Poro-o-tarao tunnel.

NZR or IRA?

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n the past track gangs used to put detonators on the track, not so much to blow up or derail any given train, but more as a means of alerting on-coming trains to the fact that track maintenance gangs were just around the corner. Prior to the advent of railcars this practice was not a problem as the bulk and vibration of the engine, be it steam or diesel, absorbed the sound and very little of the explosion would filter back to the carriages. When railcars went over track detonators, however, the full force of the detonation became immediately apparent to passengers. In such circumstances one woman went quite berserk on the Dunedin to Invercargill railcar, convinced that rebel forces were trying to blow up the train, until the guard explained the situation. The woman was on her way to visit family in Invercargill. She was understandably tired and tense after an exceptionally long journey from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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