The mothballing of Dunedin Railways represents a huge loss for the city where New Zealand’s rail preservation story started. Now, the community is asking for a chance to save their train, and with it the crown jewel in Dunedin’s tourist industry.

The Taieri Gorge Railway has been and meant many things. 

The railway line is a reminder of the arduous construction of the 236km railway from Wingatui, outside Dunedin, to Cromwell, in central Otago. The push to run excursion trains at the end of the line’s service life is a testament to the willpower of volunteers and enthusiasts, and the operation of the line has made it a stand-out tourist feature of Dunedin, giving the historic railway station more of a purpose than just a postcard image.

The company was forced to close due to level three and four restrictions, but it has shocked staff to find out through the media that the line and equipment is to be mothballed. The company is, in effect, shutting down. Dunedin Railways will no longer exist in its traditional form, an indefinite red signal for a long-standing Dunedin institution.

It may be hard to sympathise if you haven’t been down south lately, or if you have never been to Dunedin at all. However, the closure of the company has devastated the local community and has hurt supporters of the railway, which has been railing tourists down the Taieri Gorge since 1979. Many have dubbed the Taieri Gorge Railway one of the best rail journeys in New Zealand, and its home at the Dunedin Railway Station, the most photographed building in New Zealand, brings a lot of people through the door.

Perhaps most significant about the mothballing is the loss of the rolling stock and equipment, which is as famous as the journey itself. Many of the bright yellow Scarrett carriages run by the railway are over 100 years old, and the seven DJ-class locomotives date from the late 1960s. The loss of jobs hurts the most. The company employed a range of both seasonal and permanent staff, from university students to seniors who loved the job too much to retire. Almost everybody has thrown their weight behind keeping the company going. 

The “Keep Dunedin Rail Rolling” campaign has been launched to try to save the railway line and equipment, and support staff. Letters to the editor have since flooded in from people across New Zealand, and unions are supporting staff. Positivity reigns. There are plenty of ideas for what a literal train set can be used for.

Using the more modern, refurbished rolling stock, a commuter service between Dunedin and Mosgiel can easily be designed to be efficient and keep people in steady employment. It would be a more traditional setup to those in Auckland or Wellington but would be comfortable and would drop people right in the heart of the city. 

Proposals for fast commuter rail have not yet reached Otago or Southland, and once again southerners feel as if they have been left out. A plan to use existing equipment to provide the people of the south with a train service to Dunedin is not out of the question but requires support from across the boardroom table and the wider southern region.

As of writing, the board of the company has been unwilling to move on any positive proposals forward. The company is owned by Dunedin City Holdings Limited, itself owned by the Dunedin City Council. Any vitriol to those responsible for the situation or the company’s fate will do nothing useful in the short term. A key phrase from this period keeps coming to mind. Stay strong and be kind.

Despite this, the mothballing of the line and equipment will continue in the meantime. This, in a city where New Zealand’s rail preservation story started, is to be the legacy of the current council, led by a mayor who was backed by the Green Party.

Dunedin’s tourist industry is dependent on its status as a heritage centre. Dunedin was New Zealand’s first city, and if you land in the Octagon, you will have no shortage of museums, art galleries, theatres, cinemas and historic buildings to visit within a 10-minute walk. On Moray Place alone is Dunedin’s First Church, established in 1848, and the Dunedin Town Hall, where The Beatles played to a roaring crowd in 1964. Looking straight down Stuart Street you can see the railway station, the affectionately nicknamed Gingerbread House, where trains should be running from.

All the community is asking for is a chance to save their train and with it the crown jewel in Dunedin’s tourist industry. If staff and management with railway experience endeavour to run the service to be more efficient than it was before, there is no telling what positive direction they can head towards. Forty years ago, people banded together to run trains down the Gorge – now that same momentum can be used to save jobs, create a service for local residents, and stop any chance of selling off or scrapping the iconic rolling stock.

If the future is rail, the future is now.

There’s widespread appetite for domestic tourism, while public support for the alert level two shift is high.

New Zealand tourism could be handed a lifeline if New Zealanders take the domestic holidays they say they will in the next three months.

In a new Stickybeak survey, 42% said they intend to holiday in New Zealand outside the region they live in within the next quarter. Tourism operators hit by the closure of borders and counting on those who traditionally took winter breaks abroad will be buoyed by the news, with Queenstown and Wellington particularly popular.

More good news for the tourism sector comes in the broad support for the trans-Tasman bubble. 59% are in favour, suggesting, if Australian health statistics continue to parallel those of New Zealand, a groundswell in support of future moves to open the border to Australians.

Our fourth nationally representative Covid-19 survey, which went into the field an hour after the prime minister’s announcement of the move to alert level two and completed just before the budget announcement on Thursday, shows we are broadly positive about a return to school and work.

We even seem relaxed about personal finances, though the potential for a second wave of the virus worries a lot of people.

A quarter of those who have children say they are “ecstatic” about their return to school compared to only 8% being “very sad”. Homeschooling appears to have taken its toll.

Perhaps more surprising is that 80% of us are “happy” or “very happy” about returning to work, four times the number that is unhappy or very unhappy.

That said, working from home does look to have become a permanent part of the employment landscape as 51% of those of us that were in lockdown would like to spend more time working from home. That is a big percentage and now people have become skilled with the technology and home arrangements needed to make this work, any employer competing for talent in the future will need to build this into their offer to be attractive. The flow-on effects in terms of office space, parking and business culture will be profound.

In The Spinoff readers’ poll, almost 70% said they would like to work from home more often which illustrates that for some groups this is now almost a fundamental working expectation.

The government wage subsidy and the broad consensus around supporting jobs and businesses appear to have allayed some of the nation’s financial fears as only 14% say their personal finances will be affected “a lot” by the pandemic with 29% saying they will not be affected at all. The extension of the wage subsidy and the $50 billion recovery package in the budget were announced subsequent to our poll, so it is reasonable to that level of comfort may even have increased. That is good news for economic prospects given the critical function of consumer confidence in resuscitating the economy.

There is considerable fear about a second wave of the virus, however, with  57% saying they are concerned. This follows Singapore’s re-entry into lockdown and recent outbreaks in South Korea where, like New Zealand, the virus was thought to have been brought under control.

The big political call of the month, the move to alert level two was judged by 67% of respondents to be “about right” with only 6% saying it was “too late” despite the increasing volume of media commentary in support of that view.

The government continues score very highly for its response. This week 84% commend the response. This is the fourth time we have recorded a score of 80% or more and other pollsters have published similar results.

About the study

Respondents were self-selecting participants, recruited via Facebook and Instagram through ads targeted at 32 separate demographic sub-sets in New Zealand

A total of n=605 sample was achieved of adults in New Zealand.

Results in this report are weighted by age, gender and region to statistics from the 2018 Census.

For a random sample of this size and after accounting for weighting the maximum sampling error (using 95% confidence) is approximately ±4.8%.

The study went into the field on Monday 11 May and was completed Wednesday 13 May.

About Stickybeak

Stickybeak is a New Zealand startup launched globally last June, that uses chatbots to make quantitative market research more conversational and therefore less boring and even fun for respondents. Unlike conventional research which uses panels of professional paid responders, Stickybeak recruits unique respondents fresh for each survey via social media.