Matangi Trains on the Kapiti and Johnsonville Lines - 14/07/2020

(Day 4 out of 5)

The original intention was to go out to Waikanae; therefore covering the full length of the 'Kapiti Line' (which is really just the North Island Main Trunk). But of course, the battery packs for my camera just HAD to be almost dead, which forced a hasty return to Wellington to charge them again. This was after a round of filming at Takapu Road.

Once the battery sh** was sorted out, I went back to the station and caught another train to Takapu Road. This was because I wanted to see another freight train before continuing north to Plimmerton, which is what ended up happening. The sole reason for going to Plimmerton was to have a wander around the Mainline Steam depot, which is home to a wide-ish variety of steam and diesel locomotives. Four of these diesels are DC's 4248 and 4369 as well as DJ's 1228 and 1229. There's even one electric locomotive based in Plimmerton; EW 1805.

Sadly none of the engines based in Plimmerton (not even JB 1236) are able to run excursions on the mainline. Apparently KiwiRail doesn't want them running on their track; even though there's a huge drive to get domestic tourism roaring in the fallout of.....um.....virus related restrictions and border closures (and a steam-hauled excursion would draw in an awful lot of people and money).

Anyway, I was still planning to continue north of Plimmerton to Waikanae. But of course, Train 649 (which was coming down from Masterton) just simply refused to allow me to go north of Plimmerton, as I ended up whizzing back to Wellington and out to Petone (AGAIN) to see 649.

After seeing 649, I went back into Wellington then out on the Johnsonville Line. Except in this instance I only went as far as Khandallah; because there is a pedestrian crossing just north of the station that has some really weird-sounding alarms installed. I think this might be the only crossing in the country that has these weird alarms.

And once that Khandallah nonsense was done-and-dusted, I hopped back on yet another Matangi unit to go back to Wellington. Once there I caught one of the Porirua stopping trains as far as Redwood. And that's when the silly stuff really began.

I got off at Redwood for two reasons - 1) because I wanted to see the unusual staggererd platforms and 2) I wanted to wait somewhere south of Waikanae to get train 565 passing through. In the end, I ended up spending/wasting far too much time at Redwood station, and didn't get back into Wellington until 7:45pm.

Throughout this video, we will mostly see the ubiquitous Matangi units. There are some exceptions, in the form of the Capital Connection and five freight trains. These six exceptions were all locomotive-hauled, obviously.