From Kings to carrots, via Mount Doom

Luckily we didn't realise our taxi driver was wearing flip flops (sorry, jandals) until the end of the drive to the TraNZ Scenic station. We read some information boards about the golden age of railways in New Zealand (air travel scuppered all that) before taking our incredibly spacious seats and excitedly discovering the audio guide headphones.

Note the Raurimu Spiral info board above Roger's head

Travelling out of Auckland we heard about market gardens, through the King country about battles then peace-making between the British and Maori, and through numerous small towns about their busy logging, mining or railway junction past. This included the carrot capital of New Zealand, Ohakune. We also heard about the location of feral goats (which one could hunt) and feral horses, and 2,000 sheep that died from ingesting ash during recent volcanic activity.

The first major excitement came at the Raurimu Spiral, an engineering feat of rail track that overcomes a 139-metre height difference. Raurimu means one hundred Rimu trees, so we looked out for those too, breaking through the canopy.
Very soon after we'd recovered from the spiral we glimpsed Mt Ruapehu peeking out from behind a hill up ahead - we were in the National Park!

As we chose and ate lunch (brie sandwich and curry soup) Ruapehu got bigger and the view got clearer and the tourists took more photos. Stunning! We could also see the well-recognised cone of a snow-less Mt Ngarahoe (Mt Doom for the film nuts). We didn't see any hobbits though. 

Flax, Toitoi, Ruapehu, even the power lines are picturesque

Viaduct over the Rangitikei River

The third highlight of the trip was passing over several very high viaducts, crossing the Rangitikei River as we descended to the Rangitikei River valley and plains. You were trundling along and suddenly there was no visible track or ground under the train, just a railing and a huge drop down to the river below, which is flanked by tall cliffs.

Through Marton (near our final destination but unfortunately no longer a scheduled stop) we heard about the postal service that used to use the train network, where postal staff would sort the letters in a special train carriage overnight and at rural towns mail bags would be flung out onto the platform from the moving train, to be collected by the station master in the morning.

Finally, we arrived at Palmerston North, where we were met by Dora's aunt Trish and uncle Andrew!


Next time: Roger tries farm life.

Bye bye Ruapehu - until the ski season!