Train Whistle Blowin...

Oh Yes.. the tentavan. Did anyone get close to the one we saw in Kaikora?
Tuesday 6:00am. Woken by the early morning alarm call and the mobile phone in unison. Get up and do what is necessary. A dash to see who can put the kettle on fastest. I lost! I couldn’t get the kettle over my head!
The day is dawning its early morn, the taxis waiting... its taking us to the station to travel what is said by some to be one of the greatest railway journeys in the world. The TranzAlpine train traverses the Southern Alps from Christchurch on the East Coast to Greymouth on the West Coast of the South Island.
We left for the train at 7am. The station is about 20 minutes drive away and for operational reasons we have to be there at least 30 minutes before departure. You are allocated your seat and the luggage, if you have any, is tagged and stored in a “guards van”. Once aboard, you find your seat and hope you have enough leg room. Generally you don’t as the train is always full and the seating is “economy class minus”. We were fortunate as we had front facing seats without the obstruction of a table as we have had previously!
A long blow of the whistle warns everyone to get aboard the 17 passenger carriages, an observation car, cafe car and the luggage van. This is being hauled by two diesel locos generating enough kWatts to power Greymouth with electricity. Our trip will take us across the Canterbury plains and to a height of over 2000ft at Arthur’s Pass. Here the train descends 300m at 1 in 30 gradient. This is through a special tunnel 8.5km long which has doors on so that the air can be purged of diesel fumes, and so that there is enough fresh air to keep the engines running, and the passengers alive!
The scenery was truly spectacular and the rock formations need to be seen to be believed. The ice river run offs so wide that you can only imagine the awesome force of the winter/spring snow melt and the colossal power of a river in flood carrying scree and boulders in the maelstrom of churning water.
Then we had lunch.
On the reverse journey it is amazing how different the views when travelling in the opposite direction. Margery saw much more as she was awake on the return journey. I got plastered in grimy diesel smuts from spending the whole journey (except the tunnel when the observation car is closed) standing in the” fully air conditioned” observation car. It took one paper hanky, two washes with soap and water and a motel face towel to remove the grime. I get less dirty when Andy and I take the traction engine out!
One fella in our carriage (G) got off the train at Arthur’s Pass along with half the passengers, it seemed. He decided to go to the engine end to take photos. When the one minute warning whistle was sounded he was at the wrong end of the train. He did get on but couldn’t get back to his seat as there is no corridor through the observation car.
His wife didn’t know what had happened to him! Was he still on the station? (There is only one train a day in each direction!) When he did eventually get back to his wife, after she send out a distress message to the staff, and the train had stopped at Moana to let passengers off, he was escorted back to his seat to much ribaldry from fellow passengers and the train staff! At least I knew where my husband was!! Apparently people do regularly get left at stations along the route there are several stops for passengers, but these are necessarily brief. Over enthusiastic photographers, people using the station toilets or just train buffs who get off when they shouldn’t pay the price and end up looking for a hotel room for the night after they see the train disappear!
The thrills and spills don’t end there! The platform at all the stations is far too short for the train. So alighting can be a somewhat interesting challenge. Fortunately most of the carriages have a set of steps going down to the track. The challenge arises if you happen to be in one of the ones without said steps! We were always, thank goodness, in one with them! This carry on would never happen in England, of course, they just shuffle the train along to get you onto the platform instead!
At the end of a long day, M said, “Thank goodness for that, no more trains” ...unfortunately Ron had already picked up a leaflet for the next one – a gorge railway near Dunedin!!