It’s incredible the things that become part of a family’s norm and how words uttered casually can inculcate themselves into the familial vernacular. We used to live right next to the main railway line in the South Island that runs from Picton all the way south. Our eldest son, being a fixated sort of a chap, used to run out of the house every time the passenger train went past and jump up and down with excitement about the “hop-on train.” To this day, when I’m out running and see passenger trains, I think about hop-on trains.
Of course, this is somewhat ironic. The reason our young fella called it the hop-on train is because every time my aunt visited us from overseas, she would make the commute from Picton on the train and we would walk the few steps from our place to the tiny Waipara railway station to pick her up. Literally, she would “hop-on” (and, sometimes hop-off, but the young fella preferred a simpler form of nomenclature) at our little station. That is, we used to, and our reasons for no longer being able to do so go beyond the very sad fact of her passing.
You see, ever since the Kaikoura earthquake (or maybe it was the Christchurch earthquake. Either way for a long time) the commuter service from Picton south has not been able to stop to drop off or pick up passengers at our little town, nor any of the other dozens of little towns that have a railway siding, railway shed or rudimentary platform. It seems that in a drive for efficiency, and in the face of a raison d’etre that has moved from commuting to tourism, the value proposition of all those little town pick-ups and drop-offs has been lost.
It’s worth taking a peek a few decades back to see what the rail network was used for back then. Our sleepy little enclave was well-known as a railway town. It had an important station and was also the place where a branch line terminated and joined onto the main line. Back then the roads were poor and very few people had access to their own car. Thus the railway facilitated commerce, commuting and communication. There are many tales of goods being picked up and dropped off, sometimes illicitly, by railway workers. These railway workers were the backbone of our town and had an out-of-proportion role in all the community organisations that sprung up – from the Fire Brigade to Scouts. From the Lions Club to the local Rugby team.
I was thinking of hop-on trains the other day when I read an excellent letter to the editor written by a legendary local character. Now JSJ is a bit of a visionary. The first person to contemplate growing grapes in the Waipara Valley, he also spearheaded an early tourism boom and an even earlier irrigation scheme. He’s the sort of guy to talk plain common sense and not have a lot of time for bureaucrats and red tape.
Now JSJ has, ever since the earthquakes, been advocating for a return to commuter rail for our region. As he so often points out to anyone who will listen (and, in fairness, to many people who don’t listen as well) we have the infrastructure in place. The tracks and rail corridors still exist and, while some of the stations, most notably Christchurch, are long gone, there is still a potential to run commuter trains.
As JSJ sees it, we could pretty easily run trains from both north and south to scoop up commuters and deposit them safely in Christchurch. In doing so, we obviously ease up the pressure on our roading infrastructure and leverage core infrastructure that was paid for by generations of taxpayers past.
And while JSJ probably wouldn’t include himself in the list of the very small number of greenies that live in Waipara, his idea is as green as it gets. A single locomotive pulling a few carriages filled to the gunnels with commuters can replace dozens of CO2-emitting vehicles. Sure people might still have to drive to the station, but with a network of e-bikes, scooters or electric taxis at the city end they need not add to the Carbon footprint by their daily commute.
New Zealand has a love affair with cars and all things that travel by road. But this love affair is stopping us from seeing the sense of using our existing infrastructure in a more efficient manner.
I’m looking forward to having grandkids and can’t wait till they have sleepovers at Nana and Grandad’s house. Maybe by then we’ll be able to, without any sense of irony, wave to the Hop-on trains.
