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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 8 (November 1939)

Daylight Rail-Car Trip through the main Trunh — The Spiral And Other Features

page 55

Daylight Rail-Car Trip through the main Trunh
The Spiral And Other Features

It is only when one has the chance to travel by rail-car in daylight through the Main Trunk route of the North Island from Auckland to Wellington that one realises how much this new aid to travel can do to make the more spectacular views of scenic New Zealand available to railway passengers.

The more interesting parts of this route are traversed by all express trains in the night hours—excepting on the infrequent occasions when the Daylight Limited runs, and even travellers by this train cannot obtain the best in scenic effects that all the country between Te Kuiti and Marton has to offer. There are the bold yet friendly contours of the fertile limestone belt above Marton, with its rich river-flats and canyons of Arizonan magnificence. There are the broad landscape views of the mountainous central plateau, dominated by Ruapehu, Tongariro and the smoking Ngauruhoe volcano. Southward of Mangapeehi one looks across reaches of low hills that emerge like islands from a sea of blue. Across folds of land one gains occasional glimpses of the snow-capped Egmont. And a highlight of the journey is the rich forest grandeur of the virgin country near Ohakune.

It needs a rail-car trip to gain all the advantages of this route, and when such trips become available to the ordinary traveller their popularity will never wane.

From the rail-car one sees the engineering problems of construction and maintenance much more intimately and clearly than can be done by any other means, on this, of all the railway lines in New Zealand, the most notable in the range and variety of its engineering achievements.

The drama of the Raurimu Spiral is unfolded clearly on the southward run.

Its serpentine convolutions remind one strongly of the puzzling intricacies found in old-world mazes. With this difference: on the Raurimu route you know that if you keep on going on, you will come out all right—the continuous track sees to that. Here, as the railcar takes the curves, one can view the steep, rugged walls which hem the line and observe the endless work of surfacemen in keeping the scarred hill faces clear of loose boulders—work that ensures the safe passage of the trains.

(Photo., J. D. Buckley). Looking down on Raurimu Station from the first turn on the Spiral.

(Photo., J. D. Buckley).
Looking down on Raurimu Station from the first turn on the Spiral.

(Railway Publicity photo.) Typical scenic grandeur in the National Park area of the North Island Main Trunk Line. This view shows the Manganoi-a-te-ao Viaduct with Mt. Ruapehu (9,175ft.) in the background.

(Railway Publicity photo.)
Typical scenic grandeur in the National Park area of the North Island Main Trunk Line. This view shows the Manganoi-a-te-ao Viaduct with Mt. Ruapehu (9,175ft.) in the background.

page 56

From a point 198 miles south of Auckland the first view of the upper tracks is obtained; and then the attention is riveted in lively interest as the rail-car runs past Raurimu Station and through all the twists and turns of this remarkable piece of railway engineering, until the straight is reached, 500 feet higher and 5 ¼ miles farther on. The distance between these two points “as the crow flies,” is, however, only two miles.

From Raurimu Station the first rise is in the form of a balloon loop, but when the train comes back on the upper side of the loop, although it is only 5 ½ chains away from the station, it is 100 feet above it. For the next stage of the climb the track is almost triangular in shape, with a curl as it reaches the 200-feet elevation, just a little beyond the second tunnel, and right in the centre of the famous spiral loop. The track in the third 100-feet climb is shaped for all the world like a half-moon reap-hook with a bent handle. Between the third and fourth hundred feet of elevation the line is notable for its dog's leg bend, and the fifth 100-feet rise has the sectional outline of the dipper constellation with the straight handle headed towards National Park— the detraining station for visitors to the great Government Hostel, the Chateau Tongariro, ten miles away by motor service. This scenic resort hostel is the most magnificent in the Dominion.

Along the plateau of National Park there is a 20-mile run at an elevation of about 2,500 feet until the track drops down through glorious stretches of forest and over zooming viaducts to Ohakune, 2,029 feet above the sea and not far from the centre of the North Island.

These are among the scenic pleasures that rail-car transport reveals to the full on the North Island Main Trunk railway; and it is one bright hope of the future that the running of Standard rail-cars on this route may become a regular feature of travel in New Zealand.

Making New Zealand.”

Congratulations to the Centennial Branch of the Internal Affairs Department on the first issues of “Making New Zealand” the series of pictorial surveys on which a staff of specially selected writers and artists has been busy for some time. I have seen advance copies of the first two issues to be published on 1st November, and of numbers three and four to follow on 15th November. The aim of the compiler has been achieved in a series of surveys to interest everybody. The genius behind the pictorial side appears to have combed every book and periodical of New Zealand interest, and the blockmaker having done his job well the resultant gallery of pictures is an invaluable record for all time. The narratives accompanying these pictures are concise, interesting, and, where need be, dramatic. Each survey is in magazine form of thirty-two pages with over 60 illustrations and 5,000 words of text. The titles of the first four issues are:—“The Beginning” by Dr. R. S. Allan (primeval New Zealand before the advent of man); “The Maori” by Dr., E. Beaglehole (the communal life and customs of the Maori before the white man came); “Navigators and Explorers” by J. D. Pascoe (interior pioneering as well as marine discovery); and “Whalers and Sealers” by D. O. W. Hall.

There are thirty pictorial surveys in the complete series and the price is 1/-each. For readers who wish to collect the pictorials and have them bound into more permanent form, binding cases will be available at 3/- each (to hold 15 copies).