The two huge Ka steam locos up front were sheer magic, but we took them for granted in those days.

Overnight services between Auckland and Wellington began when the main trunk line opened in 1908. Its inaugural trip took Members of Parliament, led by Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward, to Auckland for a visit of the American Pacific Fleet.

In its heyday, the overnight train provided around 300 passengers a night with uncomfortable but low-cost travel. 

But heavy competition from long distance buses and price cutting by the airlines made it uneconomic: in its final months it carried only about 50 passengers a trip. Its last trip was overnight Friday 12-Saturday 13, November 2004.

More recently, it has been running as a luxury tourist service with soft reclining seats and a buffet car.

(J.A.) I learnt this as a poem when it was published in 'The Listener' in about 1958 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Main Trunk Line. I didn't know the words had a tune to go with them. It was my party piece as a recitation for years. It still does make for a good recite, just like The Day the Pub Burned Down or The Eel.

We usually pronounced the word 'Taumarunui' the politically incorrect way as 'Tammm-ra-noo-ee'.

Arthur Toms writes (Oct 2000);
"Kiwi Records, represented by Tony Vercoe at the time, liked Peter Cape's first song, "Taumarunui", but didn't think he was up to singing it on record. So they got a "professional" musician to do it, Wellington tram-driver Pat Rogers. Pat told me he couldn't sing Peter's tune (too big a range) so wrote his own.

"The Toms family arrived in Wellington for England in January 1958, and that year Tony Vercoe asked my father Don Toms to arrange and accompany some of Peter's songs on record.

"We'd come out on the "Southern Cross", sharing a dining table with a retired Taumarunui farming couple, and later that year we went to visit them. Dad went to the RSA for a beer, and perhaps incautiously asked what people thought about Peter's song.

"He was told that it was not liked at all by the Taumarunui community. Why? 'Well, it says you can't get a job here. And the girls at the station don't like it much, either.'

"Attitudes have changed a bit since then. A few years ago Peter's son Chris and his mother Barbara were invited to Taumarunui by the community to celebrate the song - and sing it, and sing it, and sing it...."

In 1995 the service was sold by the goverment for a discount price to private owners, including the notorious New Zealand company of Fay Richwhite, who had been in the centre of the Winebox Inquiry scandal.

On three occasions the service won the Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation operating in New Zealand, amidst critical reports of lax safety standards, inadequate maintenance, asset stripping and insider trading.

Tourists were not happy riding over increasingly rough tracks in dilapidated old carriages, and consequently avoided the ride. The night express service closed in 2004, and in July 2006, its new owner Toll Holdings announced it was also going to close the daytime service.

This death-knell prompted a group of Taumarunui women to compose the following parody.

Consequently Toll kept the train running, on a reduced schedule, and in July 2008 the government bought the entire railway back again and renamed it KiwiRail. This has given the Auckland - Wellington run a new lease of life. and the Express's replacement, the luxurious Northern Explorer, is now a high-class tourist attraction.