steam on mainline services in New Zealand

Tranzscenic are running steam engines on selected saturday service , between now and September .
http://www.tranzscenic.co.nz/services/steamengine.aspx

it is interesting to see them try this , saturday loadings in Winter are probably light , so any extra revenue is probably welcome .
there will be extra costs as well , so hopefully they will get decent patronage . They are advertising it on nationwide t.v .
No mention is made of extra running time , perhaps theres enough padding in the schedule to cover it , more likely , theyll just run the train late , the traditional NZR way . These trains suffer from summer heat restrictions , so i would think there is extra padding to allow for that , and they running pretty well ontime in winter .

well , I was in Hamilton last night , with time to spare , so i thought id whip out and get a photo of the Overlander arriving . I'd forgotten all about the steam specials , but as soon as i got to station , and saw a fire hose running out to the platform , i relased that was what was happening .
It arrived at 5.30pm , 1/2 an hour late , and it took 1/2 hour to fill the water , so it left an hour late . The train was quite well patronised for a winter saturday , lots of grey hair in the carriages . Quite a crowd on the platform watching the whole affair too .
the steam loco was "Diana" Ja1250 , an oil burner . there was the normal diesl behind her , i quess in an effort to stay somewhere near the schedule .
i wonder about the economics of it though , There must have been at least 5 extra crew , though some were from the steam society . wether they were paid or not i dont know .

David said...

"there was the normal diesl behind her , i quess in an effort to stay somewhere near the schedule ."


Was the diesel there providing tractive effort, or was it there simply to provide an electric generator for the carriages (much like HEP is used here in the states)? (Not being familiar with the steamers in NZ, I don't know if they were equipped with generators to power passenger cars... although I highly doubt it.)

Tractive effort . hep is provided by a generator set in the baggage car . i dont think any locos in NZ have ever been setup to provide hep . Probably because we dont have dedicated passenger locos , they just use the freight ones . In the early diesel days , when the carriages were still steam heated , they had a steam generator in a seperate van , they never put the steam plants on the diesels like the british did .

What are the typical diesel units (types) used on these trains? When I rode the Northerner in 1986 it was one of the Uboats (DX? Class?)

Dc class . when the passenger trains were sold to an independant company ,(west coast rail form Australia ) a small number of dc locomotives were renamed dcp class , and leased to them . no mods were made to the locos , and in practice they ended up been used on frieghts as well . ( tranz rail retained 50 % in the passenger company ) .
The dc class is a rebuild of the Da class , the first diesel to be brought from the USA .These were hugely successful , and ensured all future diesels were american . they are quite abit shorter than the dx 's and around 1600 hp vs the dx 'x 2600 hp or so .

here is a link to tolls websire on the dc class locomotive .
http://www.toll.co.nz/index.php?page=En ... dc_art.gif

from there , you can link to the dx class as well .

The northerner stopped running last year , i posted links to its last trip on here somewhere .

heres a link to some photos .

http://www.pbase.com/that_guy_nz/pukekohe_steam