Ormondville Rail Preservation Group Inc.
Items from 'Hawkes Bay Today' that were not online
Letters to the Editor (These letters are reprinted here as they add valuable information to the Bay Express story and rail history in general. I hope the authors don't mind.)
Bay Express (published 16/7/2001, p. 4.)
Contrary to Geoff Moss' suggestion in a recent article that the solution to the demise of the Bay Express service is "just a matter of timing", it appears that no local authority, government agency or commercial entity is going to put its hand up. Emotion aside, the dilemma of the Bay Express is a problem of low patronage, decaying rolling stock, infrastructure and sheer economics.
I was a passenger on the Bay Express on Friday, July 13, when it pulled out of Napier with uncertain and uncomfortable gait. It was impossible to balance a cup of tea on one's table, difficult to walk from carriage to carriage and hazardous even to navigate the aisle. I, and other passengers, were assured by the hard-working Man Friday that it was not a "safety issue" and that he had reported it the previous week. With knowledge of railway accidents in the United Kingdom firmly in my mind, I silently prayed!
I am a rail enthusiast and will always travel by train if I can. Geoff Moss is quite correct, in my opinion, that the Bay Express has not been well marketed and is not user-friendly. If it were, perhaps it would full of happy passengers. Wonderful scenery is important to international travellers, but they still demand and expect comfortable travel.
Governments of the past are to blame for selling such an important part of our national heritage to overseas interests. The solution now for the Bay Express could lie in whether Hawkes Bay ratepayers are prepared to subsidise and eventually use it.
Whatever happens to the passenger services however, rail networks must be retained for frieght usage - that at least pays.
- (Signed) Beverley Fullerton-Smith, Clive.
On August 14 on National Radio I heard the Mayor of Invercargill, Tim Shadbolt, discuss how they intend to save their Southerner passenger express from Christchurch to Invercargill.
It compelled me to write to request that our councils contact the Mayor of Invercargill on this before making any final decision on whether to keep trying to support our Bay Express.
Our Organisation, Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre, forwarded submissions to the Napier City Council and the Hawke's Bay Regional Council on a plan to save the Bay Express.
It involved firstly contacting Tourism NZ to seek funding and expertise to promote more use of the Bay Express through a marketing strategy aimed at overseas tourism markets and fully inclusive package tours by rail around the central North Island including coastal Hawke's Bay/Gisborne areas.
The new Tourism NZ strategy is called "Tourism NZ 2010, a plan to increase tourism for the next 10 years. Our belief is also that the Bay Express could contract to move time-sensitive freight for Tranzrail.
We openly ask now that all our local councils get together in a common cause to save our Bay Express, a tourism potential, at a time when we are spending big money on attractions for tourists.
- (Signed) K. Crispin, Napier.
Last Updated: 18/8/2001