South Island: Blue Sky
New Zealand: Blue Sky
Welcome back to New Zealand: Blue Sky. Today we continue on the Interislander from Wellington to Picton to continue our Blue Sky Journey.
Picton
Picton currently sees only the terminus of the Coastal Pacific. The plan in this case would be to revive the Southerner permanently to run from Picton to Invercargill, with the Coastal Pacific as the day time counterpart as far as Christchurch. This commuter line would follow the mainline to Riverlands before running on a spur to the Wairau Lagoon for a station and yard-which would come with a new parking lot primarily for visitors coming by car with commuters mainly using the Riverlands or Blenheim stations.
Service really doesn’t need to be much more than the existing Frontrunner in Salt Lake City, but maybe they can get away with every 2 hours on weekends unless there’s an event going on. The airport only has 5rts/day to Wellington, which I guess is good for taking flights to Australia just so you’ve (hopefully) already cleared security and stuff vs the circuitous route via the ferry.
I also converted the Blenheim Riverside tourist train into light rail. the 2ft Gauge tramway with Brashaw station moved to the mainline/Brashaw Branch with an extension past a go-kart track to Forrest Park-where one can continue to a trailhead. The Omanka branch would probably continue as a shuttle between the two existing SW termini where a second branch would loop through Renwick via HWY 6 serving the girls college and a strip mall. Woodbourne is a joint airport-military base with flights to Auckland, which is a better set up than Picton oddly.
Christchurch
Continuing down the coast to the nucleus of the South Island, Christchurch. The primary existing services, Pacific Coastal and TranzAlpine, both terminate here. The city currently has a downtown streetcar, but the trains run far away from this area-we could reroute the mainline since we are adding an airport line-but the Cathedral already went through a lot after an earthquake that rocked the city a decade ago and and downtown tunnel should’ve been divised them. Best option would be to grade seperate the existing line and make the airport line elevated also (reconfiguring parking with the station build).
With how things are, I had one branch continue with the TranzAlpine to Springfield, through Addington and through a tunnel to Lyttleton, with a ferry just across to Diamond Harbor.
This seems to be heavily freight trafficked, handling a majority of the South Island’s imports and a third of its exports-so service might end up truncated to Heathcote with 1 C-2 train and 1 C-1 train serving it per hour (extra C-2 at peak) on weekdays and C-2 only on weekends.
C-1 would mainly run from Hagley station to Raginora, with some continuing to Waltham/Lancaster Park and Amberley.
C-2 follows the route of the Southerner to Ashburton before splitting onto a new elevated ROW to the airport.
Greymouth-Westport
Taking the TranzAlpine to the west coast, plans call for the train to either split (likely at Moana) or be extended to Westport. In the meantime, a few trains per day from both cities would be extended to meet each other.
Greymouth has a similar network to Christchurch where each line has duplication with another for a significant period. The Midland and Hokatika lines share the Rapahone Branch, with the Ikahauta short-turning on the Hokatika at Gladstone, parallels the Midland to Stillwater (which in a branching situation could see added to the TranzAlpine).
The Midland line from there follows the TranzAlpine to Te Kinga-that much could be adjusted to double track and increased track speed, with Cass and Arthur’s Pass on the other side of a tunnel.
The Ikhuta line then meets Westport’s Inangahua line, which only makes 4 stops due do being no population for nearly 18.5mi/29.7km although hitting the smooth tool would be less intrusive vs the Midland line that you could afford to electrify and have money to spare.
At Westport, the Nguakawau line meets the Inanagahua-running to the town of the same name, at the gateway to the Radcliffe Recreational Area.
You could also just do one line and ignore the old station spur with Abittor being the station for Westport on the rail line-which is not ideal.
I also highlighted a bus route to Cobden for beach accsess and to help with the routing of the network there
Dunedin
While The Southerner’s return might be brief, Dunedin has still had a tourist train-the Taieri Gorge Railroad, with tracks presently ending in Middlemarch, with your 5 hour experience only taking you as far as Pukerangi. A real permentant service would serve Timaru before entering Otago region and serving Omaru before enter the Dunedin service region
Tracks originally continued all the way to Alexandra and Clyde-deep within the Otago region-still 52mis along windy roads to Queenstown-which seems to have never had any rail at all due to its remoteness.
I personally felt the distance was too long and looked too boring for one local train to run end to end, with overlap from Allanton for the airport-which will actually get a flight to Gold Coast in June (southern hemisphere winter) in addition to competition on the Auckland route and Wellington and Christchurch.
With the Main South line, I thought we could create an Island platform at Port Chambers to hold terminating trains and allow other trains to run through. There is a decent port that uses up all the yard space here, so a downtown yard might still be needed. Waikouaiti/Hawkesbury might have an abandoned race course for a secondary shop location. On the other end at Balclutha-there is already a stub track-so you could persuade a yard (or at least a layover track and can use facilities at the Silver Fern Freezing Works) to be built along it.
However, that might hinder frequency without full double track on the joint segment with 2 commuter lines (with NE service running to Warrington, and 1-2 peak round trips to Palmerston, SW service to Balclutha), 1-2 intercity routes, and all the tourist lines:
Taieri Gorge (Trains actually go to Hindon, not Mount Allen-hence a thruway is included)
Also do a special Stargazer train and other events on this line
Seasider (which has 3 versions, but basically parallel the Warrington line east of Dunedin)
Coastal Express is just a named variant, but seems to just turn back at Waitati instead of going to the brewery nearby or continuing beyond Warrington to Karitane
Victorian (runs all the way to Ōamaru, said to be New Zealand’s quirkiest town, with special version for a Steampunk Festival-also parallels the Warrington and Southerner basically to the northern border of Otago)-maybe just convert this into an intercity train instead of a tourist train?
Invercargill
To end only the same way as on Jetlag, Invercargill. I originally had a Lower Otago line, but it felt too unnecessary and instead had 2 intercity trains on the line to Dunedin.
At this stage, there is no plan for full through-running due to the loss of the Kingston line. I do however see short-turning on the Crawford line at Otautau due to rurality-but Otautau still has access to recreation with the Longwood Forest. This line won’t change much unless we want to merge the Gore line and keep the short-turn bit for 50-60% of trains.
My main provocative was with the Kingston Line restored, even just for the limits of Invercargill’s commuter rail at Lumesden, the Bluff branch (using a freight spur south of Invercargill) would use the Kingston Line and the Gore line would short-turn at Makarewa. With two branches in each direction, the network would be balanced for through-running with little change core works needed-maybe just upgraded signaling and passing loops are the best option to start.
There’s also the abandoned Takanui branch, which I decided to use for a streetcar due to being less dense (and the ROW is more visible than the Kingston Branch on satellite)-in doing so terminating at a park & ride/facility in Waimatua. At Appleby, I decided to turn it into a streetcar running on Ninth/Kevin and Conon/Deveron streets, meeting the other two lines at Optenui-just prior the name change of the streets, before looping at Queens Park. With how the park is designed, and this idea for the streetcar, an extension over the Waihopai is probably not likely unless BRT is chosen instead-but would run to Southland Hospital instead.
It’s possible we could do both kind of what SEPTA wants to do with the G line being mixed heritage streetcar and frequent bus operating busses beyond the loop at 63rd Street to the 69th Street Transit Center, before running to Frankford/Delaware. Trollies would short-turn at 40th St before continuing on their historic route to Richmond/Westmorland. However, that would mean 20 blocks of deadheading, so might as well just run the trollies as they were intended to and allow the busses to run on the parts that it can’t/no longer do (I’d also be down for events service to the Mann Music Center and possible expanded Frankford/Delaware service for events at The Filmore). Its not an idea I initially considered, but you could come up with a fun name for the combined service and reclaim the title for the southernmost streetcar/light rail network in the world.
Final Thoughts
Besides privatization, expansion of the bus network proved more fruitful for the country, leaving even the remaining routes outside the networks of Auckland and Wellington more so just for tourists or as a luxury.
I’ve seen quite a few videos on intercity bus travel in Scotland/UK and it isn’t that bad and I can see if New Zealand’s intercity bus operators are as well run and maintained as those in Brittan, I can see why they work and its not worth even messing with the freight rail roads, but 3/4 core intercity services (Te Huia, Northern Explorer, and Coastal Pacific) should be daily, the TranzAlpine I’ll let slide unless the will is there and the Southerner should be brought back, run to Invercargill, and be daily (if we have to make both Long Distance trains thrice weekly to have both, I’ll take it).