The gricer from down under

I slept badly in my bunk as we forged slowly south. Probably excitement. The engine, a ‘Ka’ 4-8-4, snarled away in the darkness – an evocative sound, reaching me in curious waves. I reached out and slid open the window. A blast of cold air made me gasp.  

Ahead in the blackness I could see a beautiful orange-red halo surrounding the Ka’s footplate. It disappeared at intervals as the locomotive rounded a rocky bluff, reappearing again as our sleeper reached the curve. The eerie glow faintly picked out distant trees and sheer rock faces on the opposite side of the gorge.

We were passing through the mountains of New Zealand’s central North Island, somewhere near Tauramanui.  Off to the east would be the mighty volcano of Mt Ngauruhoe.  

The locomotive’s headlamp swept the mountain slopes as it weaved the torturous river valley.  Everything was white... Snow! The first I had ever seen! Little did I know that just over a year later I would be struggling through 4ft drifts of the stuff by a Hampshire lineside in the dreadful winter of 1962.

It was August 14th 1960.  Our train on that night was ‘The Limited’, a premier NZR service that ran overnight from Auckland to Wellington. I was travelling to Wellington with my parents to meet our ship to England. It was said that this service became a night sleeper because it was so slow and the viaducts so sheer that passengers regularly fainted with vertigo. I can quite believe it!

The first thing I discovered about England was that being a railway enthusiast wasn’t particularly odd.  In those days, Kiwis thought that being interested in dirty, smelly, oil-burning railway locomotives was decidedly eccentric!  Perhaps it was, a little, but the first sight I had of a British locomotive at Southampton Docks was like a Cupid's arrow! It was Maunsell 4-6-0, 30850 'Lord Nelson', drifting backwards past our car at a manned crossing on its way to collect a boat train.

I had always wanted to come to England, but life was going to become very interesting for more ways than one!