Classic route
Te Huia
Hamilton → Auckland · New Zealand
Te Huia in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 138 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 35 min
- Average speed
- 53 km/h
- Top speed
- 100 km/h
- Operator
- KiwiRail / Waikato Regional Council
- Train
- DF-class diesel + refurbished SR carriages
- Countries
- New Zealand
- In service since
- 2021
- Runs
- Up to 2× daily, 7 days a week
- Riders per year
- ≈ 86k
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Restored intercity rail between Waikato and Auckland in 2021 after a 20-year gap, and went seven-days-a-week in 2025.
Te Huia gave the Waikato its trains back in 2021, twenty years after the last Auckland–Hamilton service was cut. A DF-class diesel and refurbished 1970s carriages amble beside the Waikato River, past Huntly’s power station and the Whangamarino wetland, joining Auckland’s electrified network at Pukekohe. What began as a five-year trial grew into a seven-day-a-week service in July 2025.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1597603 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 4 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: KiwiRail — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Waikato River out of Frankton
- Huntly and its power-station lake
- Whangamarino wetland
- Pukekohe market gardens
- Manukau Harbour glimpses at Puhinui
- Auckland skyline at The Strand
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