21 Nov 2021

Off the tracks: New Zealand's lost railway network

From Sunday Morning, 4:37 pm on 21 November 2021

Dr André Brett is a historian, researcher and writer who specialises in Australian and New Zealand history, in particular histories of politics, railways, the environment, and the economy.

The Wollongong-based New Zealander's latest book, Can't Get There from Here: New Zealand's Shrinking Passenger Rail Network, 1920-2020, traces the expansion and - more commonly - the contraction of New Zealand's passenger rail network over the last century.

New Zealand Rail's V-Class locomotive in 1885

New Zealand Rail's V-Class locomotive in 1885. Photo: Supplied/ E.J. McClaire Collection

Indeed, New Zealand now has less than 1500km of track for passenger services - the lowest total since the 1870s - while only Wellington and Auckland have meaningful everyday rail transport.

Dr Brett joined Sunday Morning to discuss the new book, the role rail has played in New Zealanders' lives over the years, and how we have been left with an attenuated passenger railway that is unfit for the 21st century.

While New Zealand still has a network of about 4000km of track, Brett says less than half of this is used for passenger trains today.

"Much of the total network that is used for passenger is primarily three tourist trains that run infrequently and are quite expensive, so they're not very useful for just the general everyday traveller," he says. "It's now just Wellington and Auckland that have meaningful, everyday rail transport, whereas up until the 1960s or so, this was an everyday expectation throughout the country."

Following rapid expansion of rail in the 1870s, New Zealand once had a thriving passenger rail network, much of which has been largely forgotten.

"These were services that generally ran daily, some of the very rural lines generally ran around three times a week, but usually you could anticipate a daily service, that it would connect on main lines with expresses between different towns and major cities.

"These weren't necessarily very fast trains, New Zealand trains were often quite slow by international standards. But they got you places, they served all of the communities along the route, they were an absolutely everyday aspect of how we got around the country, moving both people and goods."

In the 1920s, expansion into lightly populated rural areas had basically ended, Brett says, although established links between regions endured into the 1950s and 60s.

However, over time connections began to shut down - and Brett says this was largely due to small decisions over time, such as NZ Railways starting road services. While these were often useful for reaching places inaccessible by rail, Brett says they often ended up competing with and replacing existing services.

"One of my key points throughout the book is that we should not take it as inevitable that New Zealand has ended up as a car dependent society, with very limited options beyond private automobiles on roads," he says.

"What happened was many railway officials started to see buses as sort of this way of the future, by buying into ideas of modernity often influenced by ideas that were current in America."

Some people were put off travelling by rail as carriages aged and fell into disrepair, which led to the death of some rural services.

no caption

File photo. Photo: RNZ / Russell Palmer

"The patronage appears to be going down, so NZ Railways decides to run the train less frequently, which dissuades even more people, so the train is run even less frequently and even more people leave," he says.

"You can see how this is a vicious cycle and leads to a service in a rural area in particular being cancelled with very few people noticing.

"And one of my big points in the book is that these changes that initially go little noticed in rural areas, are harbingers of much larger changes elsewhere on the network. That gradually it winds down the health of the whole network."

However, Brett remains optimistic that a revitalisation of the railway system could be part of New Zealand's future.

"I would love to come home and come home to a better country, one that I think can really be truly great and part of that is providing people with modal choice.

"Especially with our changing climate, that we really do need to emphasise transport like rail that is very energy efficient, that can do what cars can't - that the energy efficiency of steel wheels on steel rails is literally unbeatable."

And it is a possibility - although it is now largely unused, much of the rail infrastructure of the past is still in place and could be made functional once more.

"I think this has to be part of New Zealand's future, both in terms of local commuter traffic, in terms of intercity travel, and in terms of linking cities and towns with their surrounding regions," he says.

"Where the infrastructure still exists and can be upgraded to carry passengers, it should be upgraded, it should carry passengers. New Zealand can have it all, it can be so much better."