After a short Uber ride to Christchurch Station, the city’s rail depot, we boarded the ‘TranzAlpine’ train for a day-long excursion. The trip is a classic, beginning in Christchurch on the South Island’s Pacific Coast, crosses the Southern Alps, and descends into Greymouth on the west coast & Tasman Sea. We did the one-day round trip, leaving a little after 8 in the morning and returning to Christchurch some 12 hours later.
It didn’t take long to leave Christchurch and her suburbs. Lots of sheep as we crossed the Canterbury plain, followed by a big climb up into the Alps, through Arthur’s Pass National Park, then down into the rain forests of the West Coast. The audio commentary on the route was excellent with some interesting stories on the challenges of construction and local folk.
The tracks are an engineering marvel in some incredibly hostile terrain. There are a number of stretches near the crest of the route that do not receive daylight for months at a time during the winter. Many of the trestles are lined with rows of welded metal beams to shield the train (and keep it from blowing off the tracks) from the powerful westerly winds that buffet the area. Massive rains cause flooding that regularly washes away bridges. Just last year forest fires along a remote stretch of railway closed the route as a trestle buckled from the heat.
Highly recommended!
Dick
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We have a very early start this morning as we are booked on the ‘TranzAlpine’, a passenger train that operates over the Midland Line, and is regarded as one of the world’s great train journeys for the scenery through which it passes. The journey is 139 miles one-way, taking almost five hours. There are 16 tunnels and four viaducts, with the Staircase Viaduct being 246 feet high.
We leave the Christchurch station at 8:15 heading north, then west. Once we pass the city environs, we are in the Canterbury plains a very rural area with agriculture, dairy and sheep being the primary uses for the land. We are in the plains for several hours before starting to make the rise into the Southern Alps. We stop at Arthurs pass, where besides passengers, we take on three more engines on the rear to ensure that we make it through the Otira tunnel safely (5.3 miles). After the tunnel, we leave the extra engines behind. The tunnel marks the separation from the east side of the Alps and the west. The scenery is as different as night and day. From open grassy plains and sunshine, we are now in rainforest with views that were similar to the Milford sound views. After several more hours, we arrive in Greymouth. An hour layover and the return journey gets us home around 8:00. Neither of us are hungry and are both tired from a late night and early morning, so we just hang out at the ranch for the rest of the evening.
Mary