Happy Birthday, New Zealand Railways

Today is the 150^th anniversary of the opening of the first railway line, between Christchurch and Ferrymead. To mark the occasion Steam Incorporated operated a series of excursions between their depot at Paekakariki and Wellington. We decided to take a ride and have a picnic lunch on the beach.

 

Our locomotive was Ja1271

and the carriages built in 1908. The lights have been converted from gas.

This is the depot at Paekakariki

 

and one of their "heritage diesels". We don’t normally like diesels but this one is so clean and shiny that we may make an exception just once.

The picnic was made even more wonderful by David and his Volcano device for boiling water in order to make tea or coffee.

We found shelter down amongst the vegetation on the sand dunes.

 

After a brief walk along the beach we found a convenient shop selling ice creams before it was time for the journey home and almost on time arrival into Wellington station.

In other exciting news (well, I think it is exciting) we have a flowering flax bush.

The plant is about 10 years old, it self seeded in the front garden and I transferred it to the back. It's now about 2 metres tall and the seed pods another metre. I was bemoaning the fact that it had never flowered and then I noticed a commotion of tui and realised my wish had been granted!