On Sunday 24th March 2019, Steam Incorporated who are based in the former NZR railway depot at Paekakariki ran one of their Heartland Flyer trips to Woodville and back. Whilst planning an itinerary for our fifth visit to New Zealand to see friends and family etc, this excursion was found on Steam Incorporated’s website and as we were in the Wellington area over this particular weekend, it was decided ‘to do’ this excursion. ‘We’ consisted of myself, my wife and her sister who lives in New Zealand and through the marvels of the internet, it was easy to book three seats with the request, “could we be as close to the engine as possible”. This request was granted with the allocation of a seating bay in coach B, and it then only required about 12,000 miles of travel to get to the start of the tour!
On the day, weto make the shunt from the depot to the main line, whilst making this manoeuvre, and due to a high level of water in the boiler, the loco picked up some of the excess water and blasted it up the chimney, picking up coal smuts on the way and due to the wind direction, landed this ‘rain’ on a lot of people standing on the end of the platform, including myself. Despite trying to run away I was covered in black spots, which were difficult to remove! However there were trains to go and photograph so I ran to the other end of the long platform in order to photograph the ecs reversing back towards Wellington and then coming forward across the level crossing, having switched tracks prior to coming into the station. This is where I had my first bit of good luck, because this is where I encountered John Bovis, a guy I had met in 2010 and 2015 when I had visited Steam Incorporated’s depot. John is a well-known photographer of New Zealand’s railways as well as being a contact of mine in ‘The International Brotherhood of Railway Enthusiasts’. John had helped me with the booking process and was to become a significant person through the day by letting me know about photo stops and run pasts etc.…all good!
