Introduction
The train was NZR's attempt to compete with the introduction of jet aircraft for business traffic between Auckland and Wellington. The service broke new ground in New Zealand by providing a full on-board crew of car stewards (sourced from the inter-island rail ferry service) who doubled as dining car staff at meal times. However, the product was effectively ten years too late. Travel by National Airways Corporation 737 took just over one hour; the Silver Star, by contrast, took around 12 hours and 30 minutes. While popular at holiday times, and despite providing the overnight hotel option for travellers, it simply could not attract enough passengers willing to pay a premium to travel by train between the two cities.
Read more about this topic: Silver Star (NZR Train)
Famous quotes containing the word introduction:
“For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, Will Johnstone, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Monkey Business, a wisecrack made to his fellow stowaway Chico Marx (1931)
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)