You can see marine mammals either from your seat or from open-air platforms, where nothing stands between your camera lens and the ocean as it laps within a few yards of the tracks. If the seals are particularly active the train will slow down as it passes to give you a better view. And when nature is being especially kind (and you are not focusing a camera) you can take in the majestic wildlife over scones and a cup of hot tea from the buffet counter.The trains in New Zealand are very special. In a sense they are as endangered as some species of whale, and the future of passenger services is uncertain. In line with its international network, Air New Zealand is expanding domestic services in a country that is 1,000 miles long yet has a mere four million inhabitants.
So it is little surprise that the Northerner sleeping car service that ran between Auckland and Wellington, the capital, was axed last November.Fortunately, it is still possible to follow the route - one of the best trips possible in New Zealand - by day. Having travelled through the North Island, you then catch the boat to the South Island across Cook Strait. You sail into Picton, then stroll a few yards across the quay to the station, from where your train threads its way south between mountain and sea through huge vineyards to Christchurch.Stand in the rail terminus at Wellington at rush hour and you will see no lack of commuters using crowded suburban trains, but long-distance mainline services run no more than once a day. Realising that its future is tourism, the half-private, half-state system, which brands itself as Tranz Scenic, is making a strong pitch. "Take the train to see the rellies," say the posters urging locals to make more contact with their families across the country.And these travellers are well looked after by a railway that keeps its promise to show off much of the best and most interesting parts of the country.
On a day's journey from Auckland through the North Island, the gentle farming country around Hamilton and Otorohanga gives way to the tundra and ski slopes of the 2,800m Mount Ruapehu. At one point the train edges around two hairpin bends and enters a mountain, then corkscrews up the Raurimu Spiral in the darkness in a piece of engineering worthy of anything in Switzerland. By evening the Wellington Riviera along the Tasman Sea is in view and Wellington, tightly surrounded by hills, appears beside its magnificent harbour. Between Auckland and Wellington, you have scope to break your journey, stopping off at intermediate stations to visit the wineries of Martinborough, the kiwi birds at Otorohanga and the caverns full of glow-worms at Waitomo.The crossing from Wellington to Picton was memorably described by Katherine Mansfield in her story The Voyage, which was published in 1921. Today's ferry is more comfortable than the one she wrote about, but the grandeur of the great fjord that is the Marlborough Sounds looks no less stupendous as you approach Picton. The journey on to Christchurch - another five hours if you don't alight - takes you past Kaikoura and the hundreds of thousands of new vines that will one day make New Zealand an even more important source of fine wine than it already is.On a New Zealand train you travel in comfort.
