'Out to pasture'
The location that was once the flagship of the preservation movement in the country, and an international attraction quietly deteriorating in the outdoors, a victim of greed and stupidity. its still seems to be in good nick, no obvious signs of vandalism etc. Just a bit on the worn side
All bets are currently off as to when/if it will run again as the receivers want twice what its currently worth.
9 comments:
Tis truelly a shameful sight that such an enterprise like the Kingston Flyer train, could become worthless because of commercial greed!
A shame indeed - and everything out in the open and unfenced. I thought they had a shed in Kingston?
When I win lotto I'll build a line from Queenstown to Arrowtown for the train to run on, or turn it into a high-end orient-express type service that runs from Auckland to Rotorua. The places where the money is.
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Truly disgusting...
For those of us not up with the latest, what is the current state of play?
Has the NZ Historic Places Trust been involved?
The most shameful thing is the blind stupidity of the receivers. It seems to have escaped their attention that every day the equipment sits in the open, it deteriorates and loses value, while the debts accrue interest. To ask a price based on the debt owing, and not what it is actually worth simply demonstrates the thinking that doomed the venture to failure in the first place. Time to cut their losses, surely?
and real financial 'worth' has to be pretty low given the extremely high ongoing maintenance and refurbishmet costs of locos, wagons, track etc and the risks that come with hertitage stuff . Crack an axle or have a boiler fail its inspection you can't run out to the auto parts store and buy a replacement... suddenly your asset is almost worthless
The Kingston Flyer If i remeber correctly is also due for it's over haul and boiler inspection this year.
The receivers are bound by a legal process and the fact is that people who were tied up with the operation have lost substantial sums of money and they are probably people who did not have a lot of money to begin with.
None of what happened is the fault of either the finance company or the receivers. By law the receivers are obligated to get the best possible price in order to pay the creditors, some of which are ordinary tradespeople who supplied products to the operation of the Kingston flyer. There is been a lot of denigration of them in some quarters which seems to be unwarrented.
The Kingston Flyers operation has been through numerous changes of ownership over the years because it has been difficult to make it pay its way. Its also true that purely heritage societies shut down their operations from time to time and lose money. There are not that many companies operating in New zealand doing an operation like the Kingston Flyer was and not in such an out of the way place as Kingston.
Of course the receivers are doing their job, but the problem is that as a going concern, or from an investment perspective, the operation's business value is minimal given the massive costs of overhauls and the risks. On top of this there is the location. If the line was in Queenstown or Arrowtown or Rotorua or Taupo it would have a great tourist catchment but in Kingston... that's too much of a hike from Queenstown to chug down the line just to see to Fairlight. Despite the heritage injunctions, I vote for a relocation to Dunedin to run on the OETT line - one of the few rail concerns that have a good tourist flow already, a good business model, and the infrastructure to keep the thing running.
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Hmmm, the Queesntown Lakes District Council have put a clause into their District Plan which forbids the train to be moved out of the area. Not they are putting up any money to buy it though...
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