Since I live here and can therefore technically go anywhere at anytime, I try to let visiting friends/family pick what we see when we are out adventuring. One of the top picks for Coromandel Town was the Driving Creek Railway. I had not heard of it and therefore knew nothing about it, but was willing to give it a go. So we booked a ticket, showed up on the day and set off to enjoy the ride.
The railway was not originally intended to be a tourist destination. The lines were laid by the owner of the land who was had opened a pottery shop and needed access to the clay that was up the hill. It was too high and too steep to try and transport it down to the kiln by hand, so he laid the railway for easy transport. The track was begin in 1975 and took 15 year to complete. The track became open to the public as a way to raise extra money for the owner to pay off bank loans taken out to purchase the land and to start up his pottery business.
The railway is a fully functioning business on its own, taking tourists through a Kauri forest, zig-zagging up the mountain, with tunnels, reverse points where it was easier to back up or down the track than build enough to go around forwards, and gorgeous views from the top of the hill. The tour took just over an hour, and provided history of the pottery business and railway, local history, and plenty of photo opportunities.
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| Pottery shop |
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| Our train |
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| Old, un-used track |
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| First tunnel |
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| Bottle wall along the track, wine bottles from the pottery shop |
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| My favorite tunnel |
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| Pottery along the way |
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| Top of the hill |
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