{"id":218235,"date":"2025-05-16T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?guid=bd312cca253012b3dbd36f33839b23a1"},"modified":"2025-05-16T06:00:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:00:29","slug":"regional-rail-pitch-stirs-memories-of-last-train-out-of-morrinsville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=218235","title":{"rendered":"Regional rail pitch stirs memories of last train out of Morrinsville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been over 20 years since a passenger train last stopped in Morrinsville, locals recall, but they say it\u2019d be \u201cfantastic\u201d if it came back to the town. Cathy Balvert remembers the last time the train ran to Tauranga, because she took it with her kids, now in their 30s.<\/p>\n<p>Green Party policy announced on Wednesday\u00a0proposes extending the existing Te Huia train service, between Hamilton and Auckland and building additional stations in Tauranga, Morrinsville and Waharoa.<\/p>\n<p>Stage one of the proposed work would involve proof of concept work costing $2.4 million, and station building and refurbishments to the tune of $20 million.<\/p>\n<p>The trip between Tauranga and Auckland would take two-and-a-half hours, and could be established in two years, according to the proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been over 20 years since a passenger train last stopped in Morrinsville, locals recall, but they say it\u2019d be \u201cfantastic\u201d if it came back to the town. Cathy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218236,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218235\/revisions\/218236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}