In response to my last entry, augustine provided a quote by G. K. Chesterton, one of the better authors this planet has ever seen, and I think my response to it is best contained in its own entry.

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject."This is something to which I have a very strong gut response. This response is "like hell!" Not ( Read more... )

I doubt anybody else is going to give a shit, but I am thoroughly delighted to learn that today (well, yesterday now), the New Zealand government has bought back the national railway operations and the system will be a state asset again. ( This is some of the best news I have heard in a long time. )

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Tomorrow, I leave for New Zealand. I won't be able to get on LJ or reply to e-mailed comment notifications while I'm there. I don't want to go. There are the usual factors, coupled with the fact this is my longest trip to New Zealand in many, many years and I'm really worried about my fish. They have food to last them; I just hope it dissolves ( Read more... )

Well, it's been a while since my last entry, and I forgot to reply to its comments but I'll get around to it someday soon. I've just been busy with university and so forth, and my eyes have decided they really don't like me, so that's been making life difficult, what with the copious amounts of reading I do. As far as university goes, I have ( Read more... )

My faith in the future of New Zealand's railways has received a slight boost due to an announcement today: the Overlander will continue to operate! I really didn't think the cancellation would be repealed, especially with only a couple of days of service remaining. But this really is wonderful news. Maybe when I'm in New Zealand in late November ( Read more... )

There is a bit of a saying in the railfan and model railway community, that most fans will favour and model the era of their youth, perhaps as a (subconscious) method of reliving their boyhood (or, I suppose, girlhood, but female railfans are an incredibly scarce commodity indeed). So, by extension, younger fans prefer modern trains, streamlined ( Read more... )

Bloody hell, what's happening to the state of the railways in New Zealand these days? They've gone and cancelled the Overlander, the daytime express between Wellington and Auckland, effective as of the end of September. Now the only long-distance passenger services in New Zealand are the services from Christchurch to Greymouth and Picton, and the ( Read more... )