Not so chuffed
The country’s last scheduled steam train came to a sad end, tantalisingly close to the end of its final run.
Forty-four years ago, New Zealand’s last scheduled steam train came to a sad end, tantalisingly close to the end of its final run.
IT WAS only the bitter cold of the south that saved New Zealand’s steam locomotives for so long. But the elements were no match for the march of progress.
So it was that 44 years ago, on October 25, 1971 – as Rod Stewart’s
Maggie May was topping the music charts – a JA-class steam engine hauled the country’s last scheduled steam service.
The day brought to an end 108 years of regular steam operations in New Zealand but, as government history website nzhistory.net.nz points out, the writing had long been on the wall.
The move to diesel had begun long before and by the late 1960s all North Island trains were running on diesel.
The South Island only lagged because the overnight Christchurch-Dunedin run needed steam heating through the cold months of winter.
But the introduction of train heating vans on diesels meant diesel was here to stay, even if some steam trains would live on with tourist runs.
For Paul Markholm it was undoubtedly a sad day.
He had travelled the Christchurch-Dunedin run many times and still remembers the slow slog through the suburbs of Christchurch and over the railway crossings.
Then he remembers the train hitting the flat expanse of the Canterbury Plains heading south.
Officially the speed was 60mph (100kmh) but Markholm, a longtime train fan, would often chase the train across the plains in his car.
‘‘I have been alongside the side of the express in a little old Austin doing 78mph (125kmh),’’ he recalled this week.
‘‘They were called a greyhound because they were really, really good for going across the Canterbury Plains.’’
On the train the ride was smooth and – with no cafeteria on board – the first stop heading south for refreshments was Ashburton, where travellers had 10 minutes before the train departed again.
‘‘You jumped off the train and rushed into the refreshment room . . . for a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake.’’
With passengers sipping their cups of tea the train would head south through Timaru, Oamaru, and Palmerston.
A boy would come along to collect the cups to take back to Ashburton.
Oamaru was more relaxed and passengers had time for a threecourse meal while the locomotives were switched.
The Christchurch one would return north while the Dunedin one, having just hauled passengers from the south, would head back south.
Decades later Markholm clearly remembers the trip’s highlight as he – a rail fan since buying a book about New Zealand locomotives off a mate in school – pulled down the window as it noisily hauled through the hills of Dunedin.
‘‘Hearing it working up the hills. You had to be there to understand. The beat of the locomotive, the rhythmic blast of the exhaust.’’
By 2015’s standards the train seems like a rolling environmental catastrophe.
About four tonnes of coal would get it to Oamaru, where another four tonnes were loaded for the journey onwards.
At each of the four stops, about 3000 gallons (11,300 litres) of water was taken on.
The final service was a night run with trains leaving Dunedin and Christchurch, heading north and south respectively, shortly before 11pm.
The night run had a sleeping carriage or two that those with the money could ride, two per cabin, with a hostess in the carriage to turn the seats into beds at bedtime.
Markholm did the run many times but was not on board for that final run 44 years ago.
Instead, camera in hand, he waited at Burnham, south of Christchurch.
The southbound service had already completed its overnight run making the northbound run New Zealand’s last scheduled steam train run. But it was to be a sad ending. The locomotive threw a brass bearing from the driving rod and the train pulled to a stop at Rolleston – tantalisingly close to finishing the final run.
A diesel locomotive was brought in to haul the carriage and passengers the final few miles to Christchurch.
The steam locomotive – that came so close to finishing in style – had a hasty repair and ‘‘went back home with its tail between its legs’’, Markholm said.
‘‘It was sad, especially the way it broke down.’’
Markholm had spent years photographing trains, chasing them across the Canterbury Plains.
‘‘Funnily enough,’’ he said this week, ‘‘I put my camera down and didn’t take a photo seriously after that.’’