Waiouru Wanderings - Full Length Video

From the back cover of the DVD:
Welcome to Waiouru Wanderings, where we take a break from the cities to take in the scenery and serenity of the central North Island, where we’ll see New Zealand’s rail carrier TranzRail in action.

Two weeks at Waiouru in April 2002 with a lot of spare time and a video camera, coupled with 8 days of glorious autumn weather has resulted in this collection of shots of Tranzrail activity - limited to an area bounded by Taihape to the south, and Tangiwai to the north.

In this video, we make a geographical progression northwards starting at Taihape, a passing loop at Hihitahi, a generous amount of footage (both day and night) from in and around Waiouru, then onto Tangiwai and Karioi. We then witness the rescue of a stalled train on the uphill grade out of Taihape.

The lighting from the amber skies during sunrise and sunset enhances the Tranzrail livery, coupled with a snow capped Mount Ruapehu as a backdrop, the trains take on a whole new appearance.

As expected for this area, most of the motive power is electric, however there’s still plenty of diesel action to keep the variety - which is definitely the case when looking at the rolling stock: flat cars with containers, canvas sided wagons, boxcars, auto carriers, hoppers, tank cars and lots of ZH Space Racers.

All trains are identified by brief subtitles.

Presented in standard 4:3 aspect, this program is now 19 years old - crazy how time flies. I composed and performed the music on this one myself - must have been going through some dark days, it's quite disturbing :-)