All fired up over trips by steam train

Great New Zealand Steam Journeys has assembled vintage rolling stock as well as steam engines

Success in business often involves the latest computer software, most advanced materials and pushing the envelope of innovation - but if you're selling the golden age of steam travel then modern technology is the last thing your customers are looking for.

Paul Hashfield founded tourism business Great New Zealand Steam Journeys in 2004, harking back to the altogether different era of train travel.

Hashfield is aiming the business primarily at the over-50 tourist market in the UK, North America and Australia.

"They have very strong railway heritages. In those countries there is a romance of rail travel," he says.

Hashfield is hoping to tap into an appeal for a slow meander through New Zealand in a manner that is itself a tourist attraction.

"I genuinely believe people love the locomotives themselves, they love the steam, it's a living, breathing machine," he says.

The success of the TV One show Off the Rails also sparked more demand among the local population, Hashfield says.

"People are starting to appreciate the more recent history of New Zealand which wasn't the case 25 years ago," he says.

Hashfield's own love of steam engines dates back to a stay in a Welsh hospital as a 9-year-old boy in the 1960s with nothing to do but watch the trains outside the window.

More than 40 years later, after a career including newspaper advertising and radio station management, 51-year-old Hashfield spotted a gap in the holiday market that could combine his steam hobby, an interest in travel and a desire to be his own boss.

That was six years ago.

Three years later he undertook a course at Sir George Seymour National College of Tourism and Travel in Auckland to help finalise his business plan and ensure his hobby did not cloud his business judgment.

However, it wasn't until the Government bought back the railway infrastructure in 2004 that Hashfield's nationwide steam train holiday idea got the green light.

In 1993 New Zealand Rail was privatised, sold to a business consortium and renamed Tranz Rail but in 2004 Toll Holdings bought Tranz Rail and the Government subsequently repurchased the infrastructure elements from Toll.

Government rail agency Ontrack now manages access to the rail network for all operator companies, meaning Hashfield can plan a steam train holiday itinerary with assurance.

Before the Government bought back the rail network "an excursion would be running to time but because a freight train was early they'd stop the excursion and leave it in a siding while the freight train went past.

"You can't offer a service like that to tourists," Hashfield says. "You'd be dead in the water."

Great New Zealand Steam Journeys had its first public outing at last year's tourism business event Trenz, with its first train to hit the tracks this October in a tour sold by luxury coach holiday specialist Grand Pacific Tours.

It's a South Island tour incorporating nine steam train journeys timed to reach Dunedin for the 100-year anniversary of the city's railway station.

Grand Pacific had expected its first dedicated steam railway tour would take a few months to sell but in only a few weeks it was sold out.

Sarah Smith, Grand Pacific marketing manager, said the company eventually sold out three tours for the same date.

"It was absolutely crazy," Smith says. "The interest was out of control.

"We branded it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for rail enthusiasts who love the thrill of steam," she says.

Meanwhile, Steam Journeys' own nationwide holiday trips will start next April taking two weeks to travel from Auckland down to Middlemarch with stops including Wellington, Christchurch, Timaru and Dunedin and a coach connection to Queenstown.

In the future Hashfield hopes to run four steam holidays for Grand Pacific, which is under discussion, and two nationwide journeys each year.

During the nationwide tour the train will make regular stops every day for excursions into the regions, with a day spent sightseeing in Wellington giving the engine time to cool down before the ferry trip across to Picton.

"The key reason they're travelling is to see New Zealand. It's just this is a nicer way to travel for a lot of people."

A Ja Class 40-tonne coal-fired locomotive - designed in New Zealand and built both here and in the UK - will pull authentically restored vintage carriages complete with reproduction gas lamps.

The Ja Class engine was a workhorse of the rail system in the 1950s and 1960s and is one of more than 100 working steam engines in New Zealand, which Hashfield says gives New Zealand more working engines per head of population than any other country.

Hashfield will hire engines and carriages from restoration society Steam Incorporated and professional drivers from Toll Holdings. The staff working in the carriages are volunteers.

There are other organisations already offering steam train journeys in New Zealand but nothing on the scale of a two-week holiday and not using vintage carriages on the main line, Hashfield says.

However, the trip isn't cheap. A holiday for two people with accommodation, excursions and some meals costs between $4130 and $7550 each, depending on whether they travel one island or both.