Tommy Wilson: Train trip is real Kiwi travel treat

Kiwi Rail's Northern Explorer service between Auckland and Wellington is a match for the world's great train journeys.

MY only experience with trains as a young fulla was rubbing two sand paper blocks together in the Omanu School orchestra to mimic the sound of a choo-choo train in our school performance of Train Whistle Blowing.

Might I humbly add - in a not to be sounding like a kumara sweeter than the others kind of way - I rubbed a pretty good sounding sandpaper block.

There's something about a train trip and its slow choo-choo way that gives you time to think, as it did for me coming down here to Wellington aboard the Northern Explorer the other day.

Maybe it's watching the world go lazily by outside your carriage window that slows life down to a pace where the hard drive of the hui hui hui world, left back in Tauranga Moana, is downloaded and filed in the maybe tomorrow world when I get back from my train trip.

The decision to take the train to Wellington came from a conversation I overhead last week about when the last time my mate had seen the heartlands of this country we call home.

For me it was too long ago. The norm was rush to airport, check in, walk on, click in, look out, land on, click off, race out, hail cab and just make it to a meeting before going through the whole process again.

Too fast to be too late, with no time to take in the scenic silver lining of our long white cloud.

In fact, before I boarded carriage B, the last time I slowed down long enough to see the heartlands was once again, sitting in a train when they left the Strand in Tauranga via the Kaimai tunnel to the land of a thousand lovers, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland.

What a travel treat it was to head south aboard the Northern Explorer. Everything about the nine-hour train trip was low-key, relaxed and enjoyable. From the time I was greeted by the guard at the Hamilton station, who looked like he was Casey Jones' brother straight out of Petticoat Junction, right through to when we pulled into downtown Poneke - Wellington - my 600km train trip was cool.

The service is exceptional, the on-board kai cafe is restaurant-quality and the business quality of the carriages invites an aura of comfort that truly is a world-class experience.

I know this sounds like a plug for Kiwi Rail but it is not. If only they could replicate it to other areas of our tourism industry, it's a winner mate.

Someone has done their homework on the Northern Explorer. You don't get that kind of feel-good by chance.

In my last life as a voyageur du monde, travelling the four corners of the world, I have train tripped across the Nullarbor plains of Australia, ventured through the majestic Rockies of western Canada, been whisked through France on the TGV and rumbled up to Agra from Delhi to see the Taj Mahal but they all come second to sitting aboard the Northern Explorer of New Zealand.

Sure it was springtime and even the kowhai-coloured gorse was worth a second look and there was no question that the 300 bridges and 10 viaducts that looked down to the bottom of mother earth and beyond were stunning. But nowhere is the grass greener than home.

Yes, you get a lot of time to think on a train.

To ponder about how fast life is and how slow it should be. About why Labour lost and the Steamers came last and how the answer to both are the same.

Too little too late I reckon.

You get to see something in this land that is good about life and why the rest of the world is slowly starting to work out what we take for granted.

Perhaps we should all take a train trip through the heartlands to remind us of what we have in our own back yard.

Next time I do it I might even sneak in my sandpaper blocks to help Casey Jones get up the Rarimu Spiral to Petticoat Junction.

• broblack@xtra.co.nz