West Coast Garden Railways

On Sunday we went over to Paraparaumu Beach which up the west coast a ways from Wellington to play with some Garden Railway stuff

On Wednesday we went over to Johnsonville which is near Wellington to Mack's Track hobby shop to do some shopping and shoot the bull after store hours

After leaving there we went to Tawa (not far away) to Wayne's indoor Garden Railway empire

All that railroading makes you thirsty so I went to my first winery in the Wairarapa today. Johner Estate is run by a mix of Kiwis and Germans

Back in New Zealand

Plane arrived an hour early, at 4:15AM local time. Picked up the car and took
the long way to the hotel on the Coromandel and still arrived before noon. Still haven't
got comfortable in that Toyota Corolla

The long way around took me to a couple of beaches

• Whitianga
  
  
  
  


• Whangapoua Harbor
  
  

The hotel is on the west side of the Peninsula about 10 minutes north of Thames,
the Peninsula's largest town of about 10000 people. Some views from the hotel

The reason I came to the area was to visit the Driving Creek Railway
which is very impressive

• In addition to the railway they do pottery, scupltures, and glass blowing
  
  


• They run two rail cars at a time that are powered by 60HP diesel engines, the car following
  
  


• There are number of enbankments coated with old wine bottles, Barry must have been busy, here's
  a blurry one
  
  


• The "Eyeful Tower" was completed in 2002 and is the last of the expansion on the railway
  
  


• To make the climb in the available space there are number of switch-backs. One of them actually
  extends over the side of a hill
  
  


• One of the turnouts
  
  


• Some views from the Eyeful tower