The train, the train!

Thursday, and the planned highlight of our trip!  Tranzalpine to Greymouth, returning on Friday.  I scheduled this so we weren't going there and back in one long day, and in case the weather was bad, in which case I hoped to have two opportunities for photos.

Started well, the day was clear and there were good views of snow-topped mountains.  I spent a happy half hour heading into Arthur's Pass taking photos from the open air carriage.  It was busy, but not heaving.  Most people took up a position on one side or the other, which worked fairly well.  We would look jealously at the other side if they were getting better views, and feel smug when our own side was the superior one.  The photos, sadly, are not great.  The sky was white/grey so there's not a lot of contrast.  Why should things look so lovely in person and not when you take photos of them?  It's obviously the fault of my camera.  I shall buy a new and better one immediately.

We were seated at the very end of the last carriage, which could not have been further away from the open air carriage.  On the way back I planned to ask if we could have seats closer to the OAC, but actually I only went down there twice and the advantage of sitting where we were is that nobody went past us during the trip except the crew.  There was a group of students sitting across the aisle from us and the train had barely got going when one of them stretched out a lazy arm and dragged his bag off the overhead compartment without bothering to stand up and get it properly.  His bag came down - and so did half the inbuilt light fitting.  So we got to watch the staff clean up glass and plastic.  Fun!

At Arthur's Pass, they closed the open air carriage in anticipation of the 8-k long tunnel, and added an extra engine to get us through.  When we got to the end of this, they stopped to take the engine off and then discovered that the brakes weren't working properly on one of the carriages (ours of course).  So we sat there for half an hour until they either fixed it or decided to chance their luck.

Off we trudged, this time accompanied by rain. No views from then on really, so I stayed in my seat which was at least warm and dry!  Finally we chugged into Greymouth, hoping that tomorrow's trip back would be clearer, weather-wise.  Hollow laugh.