As part of their efforts to supposedly make inter-city rail between Auckland and Wellington more cost-effective, KiwiRail have significantly changed the way the current Overlander service operates, and have now announced it will be renamed as the “Northern Explorer”. Here are the details:
KiwiRail’s new North Island train service, which will begin service in the middle of this year, has been given a new name – Northern Explorer.
The name was announced this morning at the TRENZ conference, where New Zealand’s key tourism providers meet to showcase their products to international travel and tourism buyers.
“The new name signals a fundamentally different train service for the North Island and the transformation of the service into an internationally recognised tourism product,” says KiwiRail’s Scenic Manager Tom Evers-Swindell.
“This is a journey through the heart of New Zealand’s scenic North Island and the name Northern Explorer evokes a sense of discovery on a trip with a real New Zealand experience.”
Mr Evers-Swindell says that KiwiRail has and will continue to work with tourism operators to develop tourism packages and help showcase what is great about the North Island – both inside and outside the train.
“Feedback that KiwiRail received from Overlander passengers about the service is that while the scenery is beautiful and the staff are fantastic, the carriages are very old and the journey time is too long. The introduction of the Northern Explorer service with its new scenic carriages and shorter journey time will be a big shift in the experience that will be offered to our international and domestic passengers,” Mr Evers-Swindell says.
In addition to the new carriages, changes include a new café carriage, an open-air viewing carriage, a multi-lingual commentary system, in-carriage display maps and a new menu, showcasing New Zealand food and wine.
The new train will run three weekly services from Auckland and three weekly services from Wellington, with a lay-over day on Wednesday for vehicle maintenance. In addition to reducing the number of weekly services from 14 to six, a shorter journey time with fewer stops is also being introduced. Intermediate stops will be limited to Hamilton, National Park, Ohakune and Palmerston North.
“The new timetable will be operating year-round – 6 days a week every week of the year, making it easier for customers to plan their journeys,” says Mr Evers-Swindell.
“The future for long distance passenger train travel in New Zealand is now about creating a world-class travel experience rather than simply getting people from one place to another. We want to make the new Northern Explorer service – and the North Island – a must-do tourism experience for people travelling in and around New Zealand,” Mr Evers-Swindell says.
The new way of running the service obviously means that only one train will be needed to operate it – rather than the current two trains – as the service will depart Auckland and Wellington on alternate days. Maybe it’s good that the service is one that can (hopefully) be financially sustainable, but overall the changes feel quite disappointing – effectively a cutback, especially from the current summer timetable when trains run from both Auckland and Wellington every day.
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Quite disappointed if you live in Levin, Taihape, Taumaranui or the other places it won’t stop now.
I think not stopping at intermediary points renders it pretty much useless.
Maybe though it will run over the Xmas/New Year break, when lots of people get leave and the train hasn’t run. Two years in a row I have tried to book but found it not running.
This riles though – “The future for long distance passenger train travel in New Zealand is now about creating a world-class travel experience” – world class by my definition would actually be frequent, inexpensive and efficient. Maybe I’ll have to fly to Korea for that kind of thing, because it is dead in NZ.
It’s a tourist train Matt, the days of it having a transport function are gone and frequency and efficiency don’t come into it. Last time I rode it almost nobody got on at the intermediate stops, just how many tourists are there in Levin and Taihape?
Didn’t someone on Taihape just successfully (it seemed) campaign to get that stop reinstated?
IMHO with the few stops it has left they might as well run the service with a 767 or a DC-10.
They really can’t stop at intermediate stations on request?
I last took the Overlander in Jan 2011. Over 12 (yes it was late arriving) hours without power (so no laptop and no using smartphone) and no proper coffee (actually no coffee at all — the push-button coffee machine had a fault about 20 min in) I vowed to never travel on it again until new carriages arrived.
I traveled on the new carriages on the Coastal Pacific in 2012 and it was wonderful. Having power means you can entertain yourself – No scenery can keep you interested for 12 hours no matter how amazing it is.
The cafe car is very good with an area for dining. I forget if they do real coffee but they should.
Still no eftpos though for large parts of the journey – would think this would’ve been sorted by now.
The hour stop in the National Park is useless. Drop it already. Only the quick get a meal, the rest spend the time in a queue hoping the train doesn’t leave before they get served.
Too bad the only reason the north island got the new carriages is because of lack of demand in south island. Not because they were ordered (hence having to drop one north island train).
I still believe there is a place for a profitable akl-wel passenger train, if it was good seats, bring back classes (no children in 1st), power sockets, good onboard meals, on time. There is a market for non-bus, non-train travel. Lots of people dont like flying/afraid to fly, like to be able to walk around (so not buses).
I’d also do the numbers on bringing back the over-nighter. Wake up at your destination save on accommodation. Everywhere else in the world can do it why cant we in NZ?
/endrand
Agree Matt, disagree Nick R. The role of long-distance passenger train travel anywhere should not be restricted to one market with others excluded. Norway is a country with many similarities to NZ (population, population-distribution, terrain, land-shape – just no Cook Strait), and it manages to run several trains per day on its long-distance routes which as far as I know are well-supported by locals as well as tourists. And the reality is there is always a need for quality long-distance public transport as an alternative to car and bus, and to destinations which plane cannot readily serve. I think what has happened in New Zealand is that the provision of service (one train per day or less on all routes) has historically hovered around or just below the critical threshold for making a service useful for locals. Cheaper air-fares in recent years have not helped, though there are indications that these will cease to continue at the level the market has grown used to. But somehow, national pride in New Zealand’s rail system has long been lacking with many Kiwis unashamedly talking-down the role of rail and exuding a negativity which is picked-up on by any who might want to use it. Words can make or break, and maybe Kiwis have shot themselves in the foot over this.
However there is also another aspect. During the late 1990’s/early 2000’s under a more visionary management than today, Tranz Scenic boasted trains to Rotorua, Tauranga, Napier, Dunedin, Invercargill etc, in addition to those which remain today. Not all services performed well, but a holistic approach was taken which recognised the “network effect”, i.e. the contribution of lesser as well as greater routes to the total operation, and the acceptability of some degree of cross-subsidisation. The comment was made by the then manager John Moriarty that the whole operation was a “steady little earner” for the rail business overall. Indeed this happy state of affairs persisted into privatisation under the chairmanship of Ed Burkhardt. However the blow came when majority-owners Messrs Fay and Richwhite decided to asset-strip the entire business for their own ends and installed hatchet-man Michael Beard to carve the company up for maximum cash-extraction. For a while the passenger business was part-owned by Australian company West Coast Rail who retained a strong degree of enthusiasm for the operation, but upon the death of a key director the impetus was lost. Toll Holdings appeared on the scene as new owners, openly declaring that they had no interest in passenger trains at all. I can’t remember the exact chronology of events, but one-by-one, the long-distance services were discontinued, starting with the poorer performers then on to the better performers as they too began to slip downhill. The nadir was reached with the near demise and then eleventh-hour reprieve of the Overlander.
So is the remaining rump of a long-distance passenger service viable as a tourist-only operation? Maybe, but it will remain at the mercy of whatever factors affect the tourism industry as it will have largely closed off options for re-building general-traveller patronage. Possibly if it fails altogether, the opportunity will exist for an outside operator with vision and means to start afresh, seizing the chance to re-build a passenger rail service and re-kindle the demand that the more positive among us believe is there, but which has progressively been deterred over the years. Perhaps then we could have a rail service that Kiwis (and not just foreign tourists) could be proud of. Like Norway.
Hi, I was working as Tranz Scenic’s business analyst over those years (1998-early 2005). Some points of fact: Fay Richwhite got out in 2000 when they realised that they couldn’t make any money out of Tranz Rail, and Michael Beard was appointed by the next Board, not FR. Michael Beard’s mandate was not so much to asset-strip, it was to save what could be saved; it is now clear that by 2000 if not before the previous owners had come to the view that the whole business was simply unviable, at least without massive cutbacks in the freight network.
Anyway – the problem with Tranz Scenic as it then stood is that while the business could more or less cover its running costs, most of the trains needed a lot of investment and by that stage Tranz Rail didn’t have any money for this. Hence the sale to WCR, although that did not work either. The trouble we had was simple: the only real tourist train was the Tranz-Alpine; the CHC-Picton train had some tourist potential, just not enough, and as a means of point-to-point transport the shuttle services on that route were (and are) both cheaper and faster. The Kaimai and Rotorua trains were just too slow; the latter took 4 1/2 hours to get to Auckland where a bus can do it in three. Those two trains, the Bay Express and the Southerner were all cancelled in October 2001.
The Overlander’s problems can be traced to the introduction of the Express model by Air New Zealand in mid-2002, although the intermediate stations had always faced coach competition. The drop in domestic airfares at the time, of around 20 percent, had a significant effect on the Overlander’s traffic between Auckland and Wellington proper.
“world-class travel experience”, welcome to 1897!
Cut service and abandon the nation’s rail service to tourists and freight. That’s turning lemons into lemonade. You’ve done it again, Mr. Brownlee.
Why oh why can’t they timetable this service to capture all the skiers and boarders currently driving 4-5 hours every Friday night from Wellington and Auckland to Ohakune/National Park.
It’d be such a great service, and pretty sociable to boot I reckon. The Ski Fields and KiwiRail should be motivated to make this work.
I’m sure the local councils have tried to make this happen, so why doesn’t it?
Decanka. There was a ski train called Steinlager Express which from what I recall, ran for several seasons . I agree, that would be a great ski-train once more. It wouldn’t cost that much more. Just change the name boards from National Park to reflect Northern Explorer and have shuttles taking skiers to Turoa or Whakapapa or local accomodation on the proviso that the clients book one or two nights.
“Northern Explorer”, what sort of stupid name is that? So if I go from Auckland to Wellington by train I’ll catch the “Northern Explorer”! Especially given it doesn’t even serve anywhere particularly far north – i.e north of Auckland.
What has happened to the fares? Tourist rates I fear!
Last time I caught it I arrived in Auckland 13 hours after I started. The length of time is definitely an issue, even for those in no particular hurry (all its users, otherwise they would have flown or even driven and saved many hours). The National Park stop is a real problem in this regard too. ~670km shouldn’t take more than ten hours, even with such marvels as the Raurimu Spiral.
I went on the Overlander for the first time a few weeks ago. The main problem is the carriages. They are really uncomfortable and jerky and definitely need replacing. When we went, the generator ended up breaking down and we got bussed from palmy to wellington for the last bit of the journey.
Cutting out stops and saving 1.5 hours sounds like a good plan to me. No one gets off at them anyway. 12 hours is a long time to be on a train. So increasing the tourism appeal seems the way to go.
A further problem with tourist rail, is that most of New Zealand’s railway network is single-track. More than anything else, that completely limits your timetabling options.
Why Northern Explorer? I can think of at least four Northern Explorer tourist services that already exist in New Zealand. Does this comply with the Commerce Act – or do SOE’s not have to comply with the law?
Stop whinging! The real solution will be to reintroduce the ‘Silver Fern’ railcar to cover the immediate stops. Minimum fare $50, then you wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with ‘Northern Explorer’ (sic), day-trippers.
The old Silver Fern had meals they bring to you , i wonder if this new service will be like that, revamp it make the seats more comfortable and if a drinks car make the prices more reasonable. Have movie screens at the seats.
I can’t find out what the fares are. I am coming to Welly in January of next year to visit my daughter and thought that this would be a good trip. But there is no published scale of fares that I can see.. Maybe it’s a miss.
Here: http://timetable.railnewzealand.com/
If you go here http://www.kiwirailscenic.co.nz/northern-explorer/ and put in a date of travel, and then where you are going to and from, it tells you what fares are available. I put in the 15th November and clicked “check availability”, and chose Auckland Wellington single, whereupon it told me I could get a supersaver for $158, a smart saver for $178 or a flexi fare for $198. The differences in prices are all about degrees of flexibility in rearrangeing the trip..
The have ‘demand’ pricing, like airlines. Depends on how early you book, how full it is, what time of year etc.
Thanks! But I saw from another site that you can only book saver fares if you have a NZ net address so maybe I should ask my daughter in Welly to book them.. I also understand that they have senior fares for over-60’s – I can’t see the fares there.
Hey here’s an old post, anyone know what the rest of the original stops were apart from ” Levin, Taihape & Taumaranui”?