Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook

Another big travel day. We were up and out of the hotel by 7 AM; we had mapped a walking route to Addington, where the KiwiRail station is. Arrived by 7:30; busloads of tourists being dropped off. We checked-in and boarded Car B; there were “scenic” class cars A, B, C, a café car, an open air viewing car, and D. Then there were the “scenic plus” pooh-bahs who had their own car, their own chef, their own open air viewing car. Screw them!

We had a deuce, facing forward. The train left promptly, on-time, and instantly ran late. Half an hour by the first stop.

All photographs taken professionally. On a mobile phone. Through the window of a moving train. Conrad “Day of the Locust” Hall style

Stephen said I should have called this post Mounds of Hills because, well, it was villages, towns, outposts and remote acreage offset by, yes, mounds of hills which I absent mindedly referred to as “more mounds of hills” at one point. Lots of anonymous one-horse towns like the towns Lyle Lanley sold monorails to. But mountains as well. Valleys, gorges, creek beds, sheep, cattle, rivers and streams, fields of hay, sheep, more mountains, a few mountain passes. And sheep.

The train is called the TranzAlpine and, at least online and in brochures, you’d think it would compete with The Canadian or at least day one on the Rocky Mountaineer, but in fact it’s more like Princeton through Keremeos. Arthur’s pass, the highest point of the journey, is a lovely spot, but there is very little of the drama you get driving, say, the North Cascades, aka the American Alps.

Passengers disembark (or, as the Kiwis say, step down) at Arthur’s Pass, the highest point of the journey, at about 1360 m above sea level. But, truthfully, that particular stop isn’t particularly scenic

The train stops at Moana, a pretty holiday destination on the shores of Lake Brunner. Pic doesn’t really do the scenic-ness of it justice

There is an 8.5 km tunnel which involves a total of three locomotives managing the train through a steep incline (or decline, depending on the direction), but otherwise it’s a gentle day away without too much to write home about. The “destination” of Greymouth, the largest city on the western side of the South Island, population 8300, has a real Okanagan feel about it. We scored some decent eats for lunch, and in the hour break, walked a bit of the riverfront and checked out a few shops. Soon enough it was time to do the exact same thing, take a train across the island, but facing in a different direction.

Greymouth. Sits at the mouth of, wait for it, the Grey River. Top left: looking west to the Tasman sea. Top right: looking up the Greymouth river

We took this one-day journey as the final leg of a KiwiRail pass. So, instead of stopping at Arthur’s Pass to hike, or getting off at Greymouth, on the west coast, to poke about for a few days, we road the rails there, and back, as a one day adventure.

We arrived “home” in Christchurch (late of course) nearing eight in the evening. We disembarked quickly, no luggage, and walked back towards the hotel. There was a half decent Thai place en route, so we stopped for dinner, then continued on to hit the hay. It’s amazing how tired you can get from mainly sitting.