The railway services NZ are trying to bring back are regional commuter services. Auckland to Hamilton (now in operation); Auckland to Tauranga; Wellington to Palmerston North (Capital Connection, has been in operation for 35 years, about to be upgraded to battery-electric trains, since only half the route is electrified).

And also the vague idea of local rail service around Christchurch (interestingly, a private company bought the old DMUs from Auckland's local fleet after electrification and are just starting to run special trains for Rugby games).

Part of the problem is that there is only really only three metro areas in New Zealand. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Everything else isn't really large enough to provide enough demand for a proper intercity route. And Christchurch isn't even on the same island, so you can't have a proper intercity train with the ferry getting in the way.

So the only potentially viable intercity route is Auckland to Wellington.

And apart from Hamilton and Palmerston North, (which already have commuter trains) there is absolutely nothing in the middle. The same distance in Europe or the US's eastern corridor would service 4-6 decently sized metro areas, and provide plenty of extra demand.

There just isn't enough potential demand to put a high-speed rail line through there. And without the high-speed rail, it's a 10 hour train trip that has zero chance of competing with a 1 hour plane ride.

Christchurch to Wellington is even worse. 6 hour train ride, at least an hour waiting for the ferry, 3.5 hour ferry ride. The plane does it in at little as 25 min in the air, there isn't enough time to reach cruising altitude. There is a reason why the route used to be serviced by an overnight ferry.

> And to be fair, looks like you can more or less cross the country, as long as you don't plan to get all the way to Invercargill

Yeah... but those aren't "intercity trains". They are scenic tourist trains that just so happen to be running along old intercity routes. Not bad as a tourism experience, but overpriced and not optimised for transportation needs.

The fact that you can't book both the Interislander ferry and costal pacific on the same website is very telling. They are literally run by the same company.

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If you are serious about the Christchurch to Invercargill, there is now a private company offering the occasional weekend trip: https://www.mainlander.co.nz/train-trips/the-mainlander-rail...

Same company that's providing the Rugby special trains, but this is using the old Capital Connection rolling stock. The train usually runs day trips up to Arthur's pass for cruise ships, but when there is a gap in that schedule they are running these Christchurch to Dunedin and Christchurch to Invercargill excursions.

Even more touristy than great journeys.