Spring Greens and an epic journey

This morning, we were collected by car from our hotel and taken to the railway  station to board the  Northern Explorer train. It was a long journey to Wellington: we departed  Auckland at 7.45am and arrived at dusk in Wellington at 6.30pm. It was a full train, being the start of the two week school holidays. We were seated opposite a young woman from Canada who is doing a teacher training course in Auckland, and had just finished  her second  teaching practice. (It had  suited her to do the course  wholly in English whereas in Canada she would have had to do part in French.) She seemed to have found students in New Zealand  easier to teach and control than teenagers in Canada.

The train is not huge, but has two  observation cars with its sides open to the elements, which passengers can visit  throughout the journey.See second  extra. We were glad we had worn our warmest clothes as it became  pretty chilly in the outdoor carriages as we ascended.      

It is a spectacular route, with its most notable engineering feature being the Raurimu Spiral, designed in 1898 by the surveyor Robert  Holmes. The obstacle  faced in this central section of the journey was how to  enable the  railway to negotiate the  139 metre escarpment between the volcanic plateau in the  east, and the valleys and gorges of the Whangami river in the west. Holmes solved it with one horsehorse curve,  two  90 degree curves, two tunnels, and one full circle crossing over the longer tunnel! This piece of track is 11 km long although as the  crow flies  it is a distance of  only  5km.

The journey had started passing through fairly gentle, very green,   countryside with flowering cherry trees in profusion and yellow gorse in bloom  The gorse of course is introduced, and is very invasive. 
My main picture shows the strange volcanic scenery we then encountered before the ascent into more rugged countryside with  views of snow capped Mount Ruapehu in the  distance. The railway crosses the  Rangitikei river valley and gorges by five viaducts. (see first extra.) I'm told these landscapes feature in the recent  Lord of The Rings film. 
Eventually, the railway descended into more pastoral land and headed west to hug the  Kapiti coastline as the sun set.

We were very pleased to find our driver at Wellington station after such a long trip, who took us to our hotel, the rather eccentric Naumi Studio. 
It's busy in Wellington because of an arts festival taking place this weekend and a big football match on tonight.          

Back blipped  as too tired tonight to blip