KEY POINTS:
Fred the Train's 30 years of thrilling children at a North Shore seaside park are over.
The little red engine clattered and wriggled through its last laps at Long Bay Regional Park yesterday - to the shrieks of excited children and tearful grins from drivers Barry and Judy Ware.
They bought the miniature train and its winding track near the playground 11 years ago from founder Eric Murtagh.
"We've had a good innings," said Mr Ware, who took over the railway when he retired as Browns Bay community constable.
Said his wife: "Barry thought it would be fun and it has been - we've got a lot of fun out of the kids."
Their train has carried more than 130,000 children and 50,000 adults and, yearly, 2000 special-needs children.
One day, the customers were a blindfolded woman and a man.
"They had met at the railway during a company picnic and their romance blossomed," said Mrs Ware.
"He proposed to her while Barry was driving them around pretending not to listen."
For the Wares, it has meant working weekends and public holidays and at 50c a ride, as it was for many years, and lately $1, the railway has hardly been a profitable venture.
Mrs Ware said they had tried for two years to find someone to take over the business. But their decision to name the closing day was influenced by the expiry of their park concession licence and the expense of renewing it.
Landlord Auckland Regional Council demanded a list of improvements to the station building and fittings for licence renewal.
Mrs Ware said the licence had always been automatically renewed but this time they were told to apply for a five-year licence which, together with the work and licence fee, would cost $6000.
"None of the requirements affected safety. They were pin-pricking things ... aesthetic issues."
The railway will be dismantled and removed and Fred the Train, still with its original engine, will go to a new home. It has been bought by George Clarke for his pets park on the North Shore.
ARC northern parks principal ranger Mathew Vujcich said yesterday that the train licence was an old one dating back to Mr Murtagh's time.
He said the council had been working on renewing the licence for two years or more and the operators had not been put under pressure.
ARC parks chairwoman Sandra Coney said the council had been keen to see the railway continue because it was appreciated by a lot of families, "but it did require a bit of investment in tidying up and meeting safety requirements".
