Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

The Southerner train service was cancelled in 2002 due to a lack of economic viability. It was a sad day for New Zealand rail and train lovers. As riding the Southerner was an easy way to get from Invercargill to Christchurch and anywhere in-between that was near the main truck line. I have vivid memories of being on the train alone as a 16 year old – being allowed to travel to Christchurch to visit relatives. So when I heard the train was coming back as a trial run, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. The Southerner was put on as a trial, to see if there was enough demand to bring this service back. I think there’s definitely demand, but not sure it would be a daily service.

Yesterday we boarded the train from Christchurch to Dunedin. The train left at 7am and arrived in Dunedin about 1.30pm. We had booked the train back to Christchurch so spent another 7 hours on the train going in the other direction. Many of us on the train were very nostalgic for when we rode the Southerner back in the 80’s and earlier (it was a blue train). The carriages we were on were from the Coastal Pacific, which was on a break.

The train ran over 4 days and it was booked out with people coming from all over New Zealand to ride the train again.

We were in the Scenic Plus carriage which meant we had food delivered to us approximately every 2 hours and as many drinks as we wanted. It was a day of eating some very delicious food. By the time we got to Dunedin we were in need of some exercise – having sat for 7 hours or so and just eaten everything they brought to us. I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to eat the food served on the return journey, but of course I did!

I took a lot of videos, but the glass in the windows is very reflective, so the only decent one is of us going through Oamaru – as I was on the open carriage at the time.