Table of Contents

List of Maps
Abbreviations and usage 7
Legend to maps 8
Foreword by Anthonie Tonnon
INTRODUCTION 9
What trains are we talking about? 13
Limited expresses, mixed trains and other members of the railway vocabulary 16
Power, control and branding 18
CHAPTER 1. The network in 1920 22
An emerging competitor 34
CHAPTER 2. 1920-1928: The regional railway falters 38
1920-28: Grand visions realised incompletely 47
1920-28: The end of the rural branch line 56
1921: The first cuts 59
1926-28: The buses are coming 62
CHAPTER 3. 1929-1934: A royal commission and its aftermath 66
1929-30: Reconsidering rail's role 74
1930: Tinkering at the edges 77
1930-31: Outcomes of the royal commission 81
1932: Whanganui loses suburban rail 88
1931-33: Legislative protection, rural contraction 89
1933: Something to celebrate 93
CHAPTER 4. 1935-45: A network unified in the face of adversity 96
1935-37: A modern railway for the capital 106
1936-39: Wairoa gets its railway 111
1936-40: Linking Canterbury and Marlborough 113
1936-40: Regulation and contraction 115
1940-45: Closing the gaps 119
CHAPTER 5 1945-54: The drift to road 124
NZR and the post-war transition 133
1945-50: Post-war contraction 134
1951-54: The waterfront dispute and its consequences 142
1951-54: More lost opportunities 147
1946-54: A different purpose for rail 150
CHAPTER 6 1955-68: The Fiat fiasco 158
1955-58: Railcars and the Remutakas 7
1958-59: Finalising the railcar network 173
1956-66: 'An important principle of policy' in Invercargill 176
1955-60: Rural attrition 178
1967-68: Flawed Fiats and trimmed timetables 184
CHAPTER 7. 1970-89: 'The emotive term "railcars"': Cancellations in town and country 190
1970-76: Farewell to rural and miners' trains 199
1971-78: Railcar routes rot 204
1972-82: Suburban subtractions 213
1983-88: The final echoes of the developmental railway 225
1989: The platforms are quiet 230
CHAPTER 8. 1990-2020: The false dawn 232
1991: Revival? 241
1993-2000: Privatisation and the passenger train 242
2001-02: The regional passenger train's annus horribilis 245
The difficult 2000s 251
2003-20: Changing fortunes in Auckland 254
CHAPTER 9. Whither passenger rail in New Zealand? 262
How did we get here? 265
The network in 2020 266
What might the future hold? 268
The myths we must not tell ourselves 270
What will we need to revitalise passenger rail? 272
Upper North Island 275
Lower North Island 276
North Island Main Trunk 278
South Island 280
Hamilton 283
Tauranga 285
Napier-Hastings 286
Christchurch 288
Dunedin 289
Where else? 290
All aboard! 291

About the Author

Andre Brett is a postdoctoral researcher in history at the University of Wollongong. He has written numerous articles on Australian and New Zealand history for scholarly and popular publications in both countries, and in 2016 wrote Acknowledge No Frontier: The Creation and Demise of New Zealand's Provinces, 1853-76.
Sam van der Weerden is a Dunedin mathematician and mapmaker who has carried out map work for Otago Regional Council's bus services, and Sarah Gallagher's book Scarfie Flats (2019) and promotional posters for Anthonie Tonnon's Rail Land tour (https://www.anthonietonnon.com/railland).