New Zealand Railway History: Northerner

Northerner welcome aboard leaflet 1984

The Northerner was the last of the third generation of New Zealand long-distance passenger trains that commenced with the Blue Streak and were followed by the Southerner, Silverstar, Endeavour and Silverfern, as it was designed to replace the last of the Night Limited overnight trains between Wellington and Auckland, as the "stopping" service. Whilst the Silverstar was the premium, limited stop service, all-sleeper, air conditioned designed for business travellers and those wanting luxury travel, the Northerner was the service for the average member of the public. It stopped at the smaller towns, it had a mix of seated and sleeper accommodation, and like the Southerner and Endeavour, was simply a set of refurbished 1937-1945 era 56ft carriages (with the added bonus/disbenefit of steam-heating, which was notorious for often either not-working or working too hard). Unlike the Southerner and the Endeavour, which retrofitted a 56ft carriage for buffet cars, it used the former travelling post-office cars as buffet cars, which were much more modern (having been manufactured in the early 1960s) originally designed so Post Office staff could sort the mail on overnight train services. With this operation discontinuing in the late 1960s they became surplus and enabled much higher capacity (40 rather than 20) seated buffet cars for the Northerner, with more elaborate galleys.

So the Northerner was the third of the Wellington-Auckland main trunk train services, and of the two overnight ones, lasted by far the longest. It was for many years a reasonable success. Like the Southerner, its seating cars (confusingly called Day Cars) were ex. First Class 56ft coaches, refurbished, with the same 2-1 configuration with deeply reclining vinyl clad seats. Personal overhead lights were added so passengers might be able to read on the overnight service. Of course they only carried 30 people each, so were heavy carriages for not many people. The better way to travel was in the sleepers, which were refurbished 56ft coach sleepers. All two berth, containing a washbasin and mirror, with bedding. However, toilets were at the end of each coach, so if you needed to get up in the night for ablutions, it wasn't ideal. Each sleeper had a steward whose job was mainly to convert your bench seat into a berth, and fold down the upper berth, and in the morning bring a cup of tea or coffee with biscuits to the cabin. Two stewards per train was quite a level of staffing. Each sleeper had eight cabins, with two berths each. You could book a single berth, but you'd be sharing it with a stranger. I travelled on it once, with my Dad, which I found a great thrill (my first overnight train), with great memories of having a sausage roll as the train passed through Paekakariki, sleeping in the lower bunk, poking my nose out the curtain to look at night at the passing lights, but also how noisy the train was with a window open.

Notably cabins couldn't be locked from the outside, so if you went to the buffet car, you'd want to take anything valuable with you!

Like the Southerner, after 1981 NZR reduced the full meal service in the buffet car to "cafeteria style fare" as demonstrated in this leaflet, with alcohol up till 10.15pm. Continental breakfast (cereal, fruit and toast basically) was available in the morning.

Of course as the buffet car might get busy in the evening or first thing in the morning, it spent over half of the journey almost empty, as most passengers would sleep, whilst staff and the heaven buffet car would be hauled through the centre of the North Island.

Everything changed in 1979 when the Silverstar was withdrawn for the ill-fated refurbishment and conversion that was meant to see it replace the Northerner, as by that time there wasn't enough demand to justify two overnight trains between Wellington and Auckland. The Northerner was more successful, because it essentially offered budget travel options by comfortable seat to multiple smaller towns, whereas few wanted to pay for the more expensive luxury sleepers on the Silverstar.

By the late 1980s it was made clear that the Silverstar refurbishment would not be funded by the Government (rendered prohibitively expensive by the need to remove the blue asbestos insulation). The Northerner had been receiving direct subsidies since 1982 when NZR was corporatised, and in 1988 in order to get the service to break even the sleepers were removed (as the fares required to make sleepers pay as much as seated cars would need to be double the seated fare), and the buffet cars replaced initially with a shop in the guards van, followed by a half counter shop/seated car. That "second-generation" Northerner operated from around 1991, with higher-density seating (2-2 configuration), and "video" carriages, with a ceiling mounted TV playing movies with sound played through the carriage - an interesting concept for an overnight train service!

Two on-board leaflets give a taste of travel on board. The older one was from my trip with my (late) Dad in 1983 is the original Northerner, giving a taste of the overnight train that connected Wellington with Auckland and places in-between for 12 years. The newer (1984) leaflet was one given to me.

Compared to the Southerner leaflet, the original New Zealand Railways Department logo has been replaced with the stylised "fast" New Zealand Railways Corporation logo in the 1984 leaflet. It's particularly curious to me that the front of the leaflet is a photo of the train passing Mount Ruapehu, which in regular service it would only have ever done at some time between 1 and 3am when it would have been completely dark!

At this time the service was scheduled to take 13 hours between Wellington and Auckland, with the services scheduled to pass between Ohakune and National Park. Today the only passenger train service between Wellington and Auckland is the daylight Northern Explorer service, a scenic trip predominantly targeted at international tourists.

UPDATED: Added the April 1983 Northerner leaflet, very much reminiscent of the Railways Department era, and was one we used on our trip