Author(s): David McGill

Rail

In February 1985 David McGill set off to travel New Zealand rail in guards' vans, with guards as companionable dispensers of local knowledge. The Minister of Transport Richard Prebble launched the book at Wellington Railway Station, with traditional servings of block cake, ham sandwiches and thick NZR cups of tea. Soon after his government dispensed with the services of the goods train guards. A generation later McGill introduces the leisurely journey by comparing the then Silver Fern trip from Wellington to Auckland with the present-day Overlander. On the latter he enjoys the company of former Railways worker Michael O'Leary, poet and fellow inhabitant of the born-again heritage rail settlement of Paekakariki. This extensively revised edition is lavishly illustrated with over 100 photographs old and new of our rail system, and proposes profitable tourist and local passenger train revival. An original Michael O'Leary railway poem introduces each chapter, and his appendix revives dozens of forgotten Maori railway station names in waiata for obsolete rail journeys.