All fired up over trips by steam train

Great New Zealand Steam Journeys has assembled vintage rolling stock as well as steam engines

Success in business often involves the latest computer software, most advanced materials and pushing the envelope of innovation - but if you're selling the golden age of steam travel then modern technology is the last thing your customers are looking for.

Paul Hashfield founded tourism business Great New Zealand Steam Journeys in 2004, harking back to the altogether different era of train travel.

Hashfield is aiming the business primarily at the over-50 tourist market in the UK, North America and Australia.

"They have very strong railway heritages. In those countries there is a romance of rail travel," he says.

Hashfield is hoping to tap into an appeal for a slow meander through New Zealand in a manner that is itself a tourist attraction.

"I genuinely believe people love the locomotives themselves, they love the steam, it's a living, breathing machine," he says.

The success of the TV One show Off the Rails also sparked more demand among the local population, Hashfield says.

"People are starting to appreciate the more recent history of New Zealand which wasn't the case 25 years ago," he says.

Hashfield's own love of steam engines dates back to a stay in a Welsh hospital as a 9-year-old boy in the 1960s with nothing to do but watch the trains outside the window.

More than 40 years later, after a career including newspaper advertising and radio station management, 51-year-old Hashfield spotted a gap in the holiday market that could combine his steam hobby, an interest in travel and a desire to be his own boss.

That was six years ago.

Three years later he undertook a course at Sir George Seymour National College of Tourism and Travel in Auckland to help finalise his business plan and ensure his hobby did not cloud his business judgment.

However, it wasn't until the Government bought back the railway infrastructure in 2004 that Hashfield's nationwide steam train holiday idea got the green light.

In 1993 New Zealand Rail was privatised, sold to a business consortium and renamed Tranz Rail but in 2004 Toll Holdings bought Tranz Rail and the Government subsequently repurchased the infrastructure elements from Toll.

Government rail agency Ontrack now manages access to the rail network for all operator companies, meaning Hashfield can plan a steam train holiday itinerary with assurance.