Day 73: The Northern Explorer scenic train: Auckland - Wellington, 11 hours!
PART ONE
Auckland Strand is a sort-of remainder of what
was, if that makes sense. Britomart, the terminus of Auckland's suburban railway network as discussed in the previous report, opened eight days after I was born - before then, trains used the larger, impressive Auckland station on beach road. Anyway, the big Auckland terminus was closed and fell into disuse, but a platform there reopened in 2015 as Auckland Strand when Britomart was electrified, as by then the Northern Explorer was the only diesel train using Britomart, and they wanted it to become an electric only station. Not that I blame them when Britomart is underground. So, a platform of the disused original station was revitalised and renamed Strand. Bit of history to start of the day, how cultured.
So, as I was to be catching the Northern Explorer today (the
Te Huia Intercity service to Hamilton
also uses Strand), this is where I needed to get to. Unfortunately, it's far further out of the centre than Britomart, on the very eastern edge of the CBD, and no buses had began for the day. Therefore, I had to lug the increasingly irritating suitcase with its missing wheel for a fair distance, but I did manage to get there eventually at about 7am and joined the short queue to check-in. They tagged my bag and gave me my boarding pass, so I dragged the case to the rear luggage car (converted from a former Auckland commuter carriage) and went to find my seat. Before we step on-board, just a quick look at the train itself.
We have AK Class carriages, which are relatively new coaches that operate on the Auckland Wellington
The Northern Explorer, Picton Christchurch
The Coastal Pacific and Christchurch Greymouth
The TransAlpine long-distance services. The plug doors remind me somewhat of MK4s, although the window in the door is larger on these and the hinges are visible from inside, which I think looks a bit messy. Either way, I think the carriages look very smart; sadly I think I've failed to get a picture of them to put here. Something very cool was positioned in between the first passenger carriage and the leading locomotive, but we'll get onto that later. We had a large KiwiRail locomotive at the front which looked quite impressive, and this would haul us for twelve hours from largest city Auckland at the top of the North Island to capital city Wellington at the
bottom of the North Island.
Can I just say how much I love this interior? Anyone who reads my posts on the forum (you brave soul, taking in all that waffle) will know I'm an enormous fan of wood panelling on trains, hence why I think the original ICE 3 and ICE T interior to be the nicest interior of a train on the continent. (Later and refurbished ICE don't use as much wood, and it's a much paler, faker looking wood even so) I'm also a massive form of leather, and cream-coloured leather especially, so these headrests were great to see - and even better, they were completely adjustable. You could push them up and down and fold the wings completely to rest your head firmly on them. Legroom at the airline seats was fantastic (it is worth noting you'll get a LOT more legroom at an airline seat than sat opposite someone at a table btw) and the pull down tray was wide, firm and extendable. My only gripe was that the armrest under the window had about a half gap between it and the panel above, so you can't actually get to it, but the panel above works as a suitable alternative. The windows in the ceiling were fantastic, and the luggage racks glass to enable you to see more from underneath. Signs requested only small items be put on the racks so as not to obstruct the view.
TV's from the ceiling depict the route on a virtual map and let you know where you are on the route, and where you are in the North Island in general at any particular moment of the route, and there are free headsets provided which you can plug in at any point of the journey to listen to scenic commentary about what the train is passing at the time, which isn't for me but I can definitely understand that many people would find this a great thing to have. The train was very busy as I'd expected and I did have someone next to me, but there was plenty of room. The Northern Explorer departs only three times per week, and this was actually the only departure with space when I booked it. I'd actually wanted to book for far earlier in the week and I had to completely rearrange my itinerary for this Queensland/Adelaide/NZ adventure to fit with this train, so yes, I was completely unsurprised at how busy it was. I might add that there is no first class on this or the Coastal Pacific. There is on the TransAlpine, mind.
There is no Wi-Fi and no plug sockets, which for train carriages built in the 2010s for journeys of 7-12 hours is frankly disgraceful. Don't even bother issuing a sarcastic comment (although I'm aware most of
those type of forumers who love to make cutting remarks don't really hang out in this thread, you lot are mainly lovely of course
) about needing these facilities on a scenic train. Be realistic please. I'm 19 and travelling 700km on my own, 10,000 miles from home, and I would not want to arrive at my destination with a dead phone, thanks, and on a twelve hour journey wishing for internet access and a charge phone is not unreasonable. I should add, the service is surprisingly good for such a remote route, but the ridiculously stingy data allowance I had for the week would not make data browsing on this journey an option.
The train departed on time on 7:45am. (The time zone would not change, as there is only one in New Zealand) Within minutes of departing, it was announced that the cafe car was open for business, and you should have seen the comical surge of people rushing to get to it. How ridiculous, I thought. It's an eleven and a half hour journey, for goodness' sake, what's the rush? I resolved to pop down later, when it was actually quiet. There is nothing at all remarkable about the first half-hour to forty five minutes or so of the journey, as the train winds up and down the suburban railway route to Papakura, so I sipped my Red Bull and did some work on my computer. I can't properly enjoy a long journey if I don't have my Mac out, and I did enjoy typing away as I sat in the comfortable seat of a very classy looking carriage.
As we passed the temporarily closed Pukekoke, which is the boundary of Auckland's suburban rail network, the houses and buildings began to drop off quite quickly and we were soon in very nice countryside. It's at this point that I decided to make my way into the adjacent carriage. No, not the passenger carriage behind me, but the very special carriage in between mine and the loco. An open-air viewing carriage!
Oh, what an absolutely fantastic, fantastic thing. I spent most of this long journey here. It's, as the name suggests, completely open air, and by that I mean there's no windows at all, just what I suppose is effectively a massive long gaping hole so you can really truly feel like you're seeing N.Z. It's magnificent, and done so cleverly in that you can lean over the bar without putting yourself in any danger, due to this sloping catchment area which means even if you're leaning out a bit, you're still wholly within the train and face no risk of ... well, decapitation, to put it bluntly. Let me tell you, especially when the roaring loco picked up speed, it was incredible to be in this carriage with the cold Kiwi winds smacking you in the face, the different smells which could vary from the exceptionally potent fields of lavender one minute to a somewhat less preferable stench of fresh manure. It was great, but what I didn't know at this point was that the journey had barely started. This was just fields, and it was about to get much more scenic.
This is a still from a video, hence the blurriness.
Great view of the loco too!
The train soon stopped in Hamilton, where a large (20/30 of them?) committee of old women with name badges (and all hilariously stereotypical "committee woman" names too like Anne, Carol, June, Brenda, etc.) joined and took their seats in what had until then been the rather empty rear carriage. Pulling out of the station behind the locomotive in the open air car was certainly something, locomotive bashers would have gone absolutely nuts, this enormous machine making an absolute storm of a noise as it thundered out of the station. You could smell the diesel too.
It went on and soon the observation car began to get very popular as we started piling through mountains which rapidly began to grow. It began to feel very reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands all of a sudden, and then after another half hour forget the boring old Scottish Highlands, it was looking more like Austria/Switzerland minus the snow. (The weather was really inconsistent btw - it never rained but it kept going from gorgeous blue skies to grey clouds to back to blue skies again unpredictably.) And just remember, I was viewing it from an open air carriage. I could hear everything, smell everything, and see everything with ridiculously clear vision thanks to there being no glass in the way.
After about an hour and a half (definitely didn't feel like that long to be honest), I decided to check out the bistro, so I wandered down. It's a really lovely cafe car, two thirds kitchen/counter and a third seating. The cafe seating uses the same seats as in the standard carriages but in a (very space inefficient, so there weren't many seats there) 2+1 layout, all tables, and the seats were all over brown leather. Unlike the cream leather of the standard carriages which was very obviously good quality stuff, I think this might have been "Pleather" on the cafe seats, but no matter, they were comfy to sit in. I ordered a coffee which was quite nice, and a hot breakfast baguette containing egg, sausage, bacon and relish.
The bistro!
A very nice sandwich - apart from the sausage. If you click on the picture so that it expands, you can see for yourself just how pink it was. You'll also see what I mean about it going from blue skies to grey in a heartbeat. It was back to lovely blue again after 20 minutes!
The baguette... well, it was nice and all, with delightfully crispy bacon, but inside was the palest sausage I've ever seen. It looked 100% raw and that is not an exaggeration in the slightest. Pale pink. And the taste was unlike anything I've ever tasted before, it was vile, really rancid, and not very hot in the middle. I went to the counter and sheepishly said that I wondered if the sausage hadn't been cooked enough, to which she looked at me as if I was mad.
"It's because they're
pork sausages. That's what pork ones look like," was the unbelievable reply.
Ahh, that explains why they don't look like normal sausages, because they were PORK sausages. Oh wait! Hang on... almost ALL (non-vegan) sausages* (apart from beef ones but let's face it who gets those sickly meaty things, and chicken sausages if you're one of those people that try to be healthy but disregard the fact they're just as salty and fatty) are pork, so that's a truly bad excuse tbh, and concerning as undercooked pork is very dangerous. I just ate the baguette without the sausage, and that was nice enough.
I really liked the bistro carriage, and I wanted to stay sat there for a while longer, but you can only sit there if you're ordering and consuming bistro food, so I got myself a nice Anzac cookie which is an Australian and New Zealand traditional fruity/nutty biscuit (I've made them myself a few times at home) which was absolutely delicious. When that was gone, I relaxed for a bit to let it go down like, and then returned to my seat to do a bit more computer work for an hour or so. It was an incredibly scenic journey, but please don't forget it's a 12 hour journey I'm doing here. That's like London Edinburgh and back to London, and then back down to Newcastle on top, and I can't look outside the window constantly for 12 hours or my eyes'll go square
I was also very tired from only having four or five hours sleep, so I napped a bit, and then returned to the open air carriage as we passed the National Park.
Deers running through the fields. Again, it's a video still, so a bit blurry.
Let's put the rest in Part Two.
.
