Susan's visit - The TranzAlpine: Christchurch to Greymount via Arthur's Pass

It was late in the evening when we arrived in Christchurch but we got a shuttle to our hostel and then went out for pizza. We were booked on the TranzAlpine train tour over Arthur’s Pass to Greymouth and back for the next day and in the hostel we were told that a shuttle ran to the train station every morning about 7am and we just had to wait outside for it.

We had a quick breakfast before going outside to wait for the bus at 7am. At 7.45am we were very cold and getting worried, as the bus had still not arrived and our tickets said that we had to be checked in before 7.45… However, the shuttle company obviously knew differently and finally turned up and got us there just in time. We had hoped to get a bit more substantial a breakfast while waiting in the station but there was nothing there bar a dodgy coffee machine so we got on the train, found our seats and settled in for the day.

The trip claims to be one of the world’s greatest train journeys and starts along the flat of the Canterbury Plains with the Alps looming in the distance, getting more beautiful the closer we got. There had been some awful weather over the country while we were in Hawkes Bay, the only place to be missed by said bad weather. As a result the mountains were perfectly snow capped. Also as a result we ended up being quite delayed along the trip as the points along the track were frozen and the driver had to keep stopping the train to get out to move them.

Once we got to the mountains we started climbing through gorges and tunnels, up the “Staircase” and over several viaducts making our way to the small settlement of Arthur’s Pass. We stopped there for some time while waiting for the air to be cleared in our next tunnel, the longest on the trip at 8.5km, through which a coal train had just passed. The delay was again as a result of the bad weather, which had caused one of the two extraction fans in the tunnel to break. It gave us plenty of time to take photos though!

Having enjoyed the scenery all the way we arrived in Greymouth an over hour late, just after the time that the train was timetabled to leave. The train had to be cleaned and refuelled regardless of the time so we were still allowed an hour to go into Greymouth. As it is not a very interesting town we used that time up finding somewhere that was still open for lunch and eating.

Back on the train again it was a similarly beautiful trip back up into the mountains again. It was still daylight when we went into the “Otira”, the long tunnel I told you about. It is at quite a steep gradient so, while it hadn’t taken us long to go through that morning, it was a slow trip back up. When we emerged the sun had set! I had been hoping that morning that we’d get to see the sunset when we were just leaving the mountains but with all the delays that was not to be. However, when we stopped at Arthur’s Pass there was still an amazing pink glow to the sky as per the photo here.

We hopped back on the train when the siren sounded and were glad of the heat inside. We carried on to Christchurch in darkness, unfortunately missing out on the last bit of sightseeing for the day. It was a really good trip with beautiful scenery that you could relax and enjoy fully without having to worry about driving or anything else so it’s worth doing if you want to see the mountains in comfort.