Up bright and early compared to the last week or two, to walk the ten minutes to the station for our Kiwi Scenic Rail journey to the West coast (and back). Very efficient check-in with boarding passes for your allocated seats, British Rail eat your heart out. I will however say that in true train fashion we were nearly an hour late arriving in Greymouth. We therefore thought we would no longer have the hour off the train but no, they delayed the return train by an hour, logical of course.  
Great journey with great scenery over The Southern Alps with an open car for even better viewing . Blooming cold though and that was just the air conditioning set on freezing specially for the large number of Americans. Can they talk at full volume or what. Luckily we were provided with headphones with an excellent commentary throughout most of the journey. This blotted them out although I didn't see one of them making use of theirs, why did they bother to take the train! Although Greymouth is definitely not scenic it was pleasant to revisit from our trip last year. An important mining port it has also witnessed some of the worst mining accidents in New Zealand. Return journey was much quieter and they made up some time so we arrived back in Christchurch at 7pm. A long day but well worth it.