Northland for me has been a sort of "last frontier" in this country - its the largest expanse of area that I've never visited and probably the only province I had never been to. There isn't huge amounts of area in this country that I haven't been (upper Westland, Catlins, Round the East Cape and Stewart Island) but Northland was by far the hugest chunk. Railwise, it's the "Badlands" - you see and hear very little about rail related stuff north of Auckland, both KiwiRail operations and preservation groups. What you do hear are little snippets of information, but you're never sure of how accurate they are or how current they might be. What was for certain is that the KiwiRail line north of Auckland is under threat, and there is a good chance it won't be in operation by the time I get back from the UK. Hence the impetus for the trip.
Because trains only run on the North Auckland Line (NAL) during the week, it meant taking time off work. We allowed two days - so after work on Wednesday, I flew up to Auckland where I was met by David and we drove the roughly 2.5hrs to Whangarei where we were going to base ourselves. The night was very clear and cloudless - meaning we got a great view of the blood red moon eclipse taking place after our arrival in Whangarei. This is my amateurish attempt at capturing the moon - I haven't dabbled in Astrophotography before so it took a lot of experimentation to produce a semi-passable result. But it looked way neat, I've never seen anything like that before! |
Friday morning saw almost a carbon copy repeat of the previous morning - up early, and then to Otiria to catch another 4-wheeler freight and follow it back. We were supposed to be joined by Ian from Auckland, but thanks to his GPS sending him on a very convoluted back-country route we didn't see him until we were back in Whangarei. We then headed to the Heritage Park where there's a small railway; myself and David had gone for an explore the evening before after the park had closed (but is still accessible to the public), and had seen a sign saying they were operating trains with a diesel between 10am and 2pm for the rest of the week. So with Ian now a part of the party, we headed to the park railway. We found a lone diesel and a guy in it constantly ringing up people on a cell-phone, who then told us the train would soon be coming. It showed up - and it was their little steam locomotive! it transpired they had the loco in steam to test it out after a boiler inspection doing some shunting, the man on the cell phone rang them up to say there were some passengers and to come to the station with a carriage - a literal dial-a-train! Turns out they weren't actually operating that day either. Nevertheless we got our ride, and somehow I ended up having a ride in the cab of the wee loco. Quite unexpected!
Saturday we left Whangarei in the morning for Auckland - David was flying to Sydney for a Tram Conference that evening and had to check in around 3pm, but we had time to do a tiki-tour on the way back down before meeting up with Ian again and embarking on the 12pm harbour cruise aboard the steam tug W.C. Daldy which Ian helps look after. It was chartered by Ports of Auckland to do hour-long cruises showing off the port and harbour - all for a gold coin donation. It was a pretty neat way to be out and about on Auckland's Harbour! we even saw the naval frigate Te Kaha near the harbour bridge, for what looked to be a publicity photoshoot.