From the West Coast to the East Coast.......on the Trans Alpine Train


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Oceania » New Zealand » South Island » Christchurch
March 28th 2022
Published: April 8th 2022
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We have just a short 50minute drive down to Greymouth today before we give the Corolla back and join the Trans Alpine train to head to Christchurch. So getting up and having breakfast didn’t seem a priority to us.

The day wasn’t quite as good as it has been for the last few days with more cloud overhead and out to sea although there was promise that it might clear once the sun could poke through.

Breakfast was very relaxing in the restaurant looking out at the Tasman Sea. We had either been too late for our downstairs neighbours from the campervan or too early as we didn’t see them. The resort complex is sited on both sides of the highway with an underpass for guests to go to and from their units and the restaurant/bar. We had been the only ones breakfasting although as we finished another couple did turn up.

The car was packed up and we left behind the surplus breakfast items we hadn’t been able to consume. So we were now down to 2 suitcases and 2 backpacks and travelling light!

We drove the short distance up the highway to the Punakaiki Rocks reserve.Gretchen was happy to look around the two shops while I took the trail through the reserve which has some great views of the rocks and blowholes,which despite a lack of wind still seemed to working well and providing plenty of wave action.

As promised the overhead conditions did brighten up as we headed south to Greymouth and by the time we reached the railway station where we were to leave the car, we had a fine, blue sky above.

With a couple of hours to spare until the train left at 2.05pm bound for Christchurch we took a stroll along the high stop bank that had been extended in height after the devastating floods of 1988.

When you walk at ground level around the town you cannot see the river as the stop bank is so high. And it is really only when you walk on the top of the stop bank that you can appreciate the height of floods that had gone before and understand why so much damage to the buildings etc from the massive flow of water that is quickly bought down to the sea during major storms. All the major floods have been given names starting with The Great Flood of 1872 through to The Biggest One in 1988.

Yet West Coasters are a very resilient lot, you have to be when you live where the rainfall often exceeds 2500mm per annum,and they are also very proud of ‘being a Coaster’.

After a coffee and a bite to eat we wandered back to the railway station where activity was starting to grow in the anticipation of the arrival of the Trans Alpine from Christchurch.

The train runs on 4 days of the week having the midweek period off when the number of tourists and locals that use the train for getting to and from the other coast are less than just before or after and on a weekend.

The arrival of the train had a certain dramatic moment to it as the leading diesel engine comes into sight as it crosses what is probably the busiest road downtown bringing all traffic to a stop as it snakes long the platform and gently comes to a stop taking up the full platform length.

It is not a quick turn around and in fact the train is taken away and the engines uncoupled and moved to what had been the rear of the train when it arrived and then the whole train is placed back along the station platform.

There were four passenger carriages, 1 open air viewing carriage and a café carriage plus a carriage for baggage and it seemed a bit of an overkill to have 2 DX locomotives of around 3000hp pulling what seemed to be a relatively lightly weighted train.

Our carriage was about ¼ full and we had heaps of space around us with a table and empty seats opposite our seats where we spread ourselves.

The train departed Greymouth station on time and crawled its way slowly across the main street into the town and then along the banks of the Grey River heading towards the Southern Alps.

The rail line doesn’t follow the main road to Otira, the last village before you cross the Southern Alps. Rather it heads northeast to Brunner through long gone settlements that were the start of population on the Coast. Then the train turned southerly through the picturesque Arnold Valley where the deciduous trees were starting to turn colour and lose their leaves with autumn slowly making progress towards winter.

All the while the train would get up a bit of speed and then have to restrict its pace when more work being done on the rail track was encountered. However it made a leisurely pace for us to sit back and enjoy the passing scenery from the huge ‘picture ‘windows of our carriage.

Our first stop was at Moana, the village of an ever increasing number of fancy looking holiday homes built in recent years, many with magnificent views of Lake Brunner named for Thomas Brunner who was an English born surveyor who in 1841 joined the NZ Company and spent 23 years exploring the top half of the South Island searching for sites for towns and eventual cities such as Nelson to be inhabitated.He died relatively young at age 52 of a stroke and was buried in Wakapuaka Cemetery in Nelson. He was married but the couple had no children which is little wonder when you read about the time and distances he travelled exploring and surveying the top half of the South Island in particular. Brunner was certainly very influential in the way NZ developed in the mid 1800’s and his exploits make very interesting reading.

The Trans Alpine train now picked up speed as the track ahead straightened with the Southern Alps just a short distance away.

Just before the line turned more easterly and entered into a valley that would take us up to Otira,the last village on the western side of the Southern Alps, we passed through the locality with an intriguing name of Inchbonnie.The name relates back to the Scottish lowlands meaning ‘pretty’ and ‘island’. The location was the place in 2006 where an attempt was made to eradicate ragwort on the West Coast. I don’t think it succeeded given the amount of tall ragwort plants with yellow flowers dotting the paddocks.

As the train got along at a good clip we took the opportunity to spend some time in the open air observation car getting photos and videos of the Taramakau River and the Southern Alps starting to make themselves apparent on either side of the valley as we continued towards our next stop at Otira.The experience in the open air carriage was better than expected although the day temperature was in the mid 20’s so the rushing wind outside the carriage didn’t make it unpleasant.

When the rail line was constructed the Southern Alps was always going to be the greatest barrier to overcome to get between the east and west coasts.

It had taken a couple of hours to reach the rather dilapidated and rundown Otira station but there were important things for the train crew to achieve for the safety of the train and the passengers for the next 8.5km before we could proceed into what was the longest tunnel in the British Empire when it was opened in 1923 completing the line fully from east to west.

While we admired the brightly coloured and well maintained ex-railway workers houses adjacent to the station the train crew and 4 other train drivers hooked up a further 4 DX engines to our train giving us a further 12,000hp of pulling power for the ascent through the tunnel to Arthurs Pass.

The gradient in the tunnel is mainly 1 in 33 with a 250metre rise between Otira and Arthurs Pass and because dangerous gases built up inside the tunnel, steam engines could not be used so the tunnel was electrified with electricity being supplied by a small coal fired built near Otira that provided the electricity until 1941 when it was connected to the national grid.

In 1997 electrification was replaced by the DX diesel locomotives although a way was still required to avoid the toxic gases building up in the tunnel. To solve this problem a system was established where a door at the Otira end closes after a train enters and a series of fans behind the train extract the gases.

We emerged at the Arthur’s Pass end with the sky still a brilliant blue and after a short stop where the extra 4 engines were unhooked from the train we were on our way again having overcome the biggest problem on the line.

We were still amidst the mountains of the Southern Alps as the Trans Alpine picked up speed heading downhill beside the Waimakariri River with the SH73 in the distance on the other side of the wide, shingly river.

As the Waimakariri River narrowed due to entering a gorge well below the rail line, the train started to slow as the curves became sharper as we negotiated a section of track with a number of short tunnels and bridges over deep gorges with water flowing down to the river.

This might have been a good time to take to the open viewing carriage but getting uninterrupted video or even taking photos was always going to be difficult with the tunnels and bends resulting in not always having a clear view of your subject or even time to take your shot before it was gone. So we sat back and watched all this pass from our seats.

Before we knew it the train emerged from the foothills and we were onto the Canterbury Plains passing through Springfield and Darfield in quick succession before joining the main line at Rolleston and heading north into Christchurch.

In 2011 the original railway station for Christchurch was located on Moorhouse Avenue close to the city centre.However,damaged sustained in the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and the fact that there were now only 2 passenger trains per day using the station it was decided that it would have been too costly to repair the damage.

So a new more modest station was built at Addington and although it is a little further away from the downtown area of the city it is perfectly adequate for passengers.

The Trans Alpine arrived into Addington, Christchurch about 20 minutes late which we thought wasn’t a bad effort considering the number of times the train had had to slow due to track repairs during the 4 ½ hour journey.

We had toyed with the idea of trying to make our newly installed app for an Uber ride to our overnight hotel near the cathedral but in the end grabbed a taxi and got ourselves a driver who offered a cheap ride to the airport tomorrow in appreciation of us riding in his taxi with him.

We are always suspicious of deals offered out of the blue and so we said we would consider it and ring him tomorrow if we wanted to take him up.

All we wanted was to check in at The Quest, find a place to eat and get some sleep as it had been quite a long day since leaving Punakaiki.

By 9.30pm we had achieved those 3 things and with a pint of Guinness and a Guinness Pie and chips inside us we were ready to call it a day satisfied that at long last we had gotten to ride the Trans Alpine and we could tick it off our list of ‘Things to do before we…’


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