Matt Turner's lavishly produced coffee-table book, Rail: 150 Years of Rail in New Zealand (Penguin), celebrates the first steel-on-steel transport in New Zealand, a city-to-wharf railway at Ferrymead, Christchurch, which opened in December 1863.
The photographic journey takes the reader through the great leap forward of Julius Vogel's public works schemes and the ''golden age'' between the wars into the modern diesel and electric era.
Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat) has climbed aboard as co-publisher and lends authority to make this an ''official biography'' of rail.
Motat's archives are the main source of photos, mostly from the collections of Don Allan and Les Downey.
Beautifully reproduced black-and-white historic images are interspersed with colour photos of restored wagons and locomotives.
The modern era is glossed-over somewhat and is chiefly illustrated with present-day photos.
This is a pity as many ''modern'' rail vehicles have been around for three or four decades and there is a wealth of collected colour prints and slides that could have been used.
There have been several books published recently to mark the 2013 rail sesquicentenary.
This one will appeal to a general audience far beyond the ''train brain'' set.
Unlike many rail writers, Turner does not provide an exhaustive (and potentially exhausting) blow-by-blow history, rather a degustation of selected episodes that shaped the New Zealand network.
The text benefits from being written by a writer who likes trains rather than by a trainspotter who likes writing.
- Peter Dowden
