I was entertaining some younger out of town visitors upstairs in a restaurant on The Strand the other night.

It was a typically balmy Bay of Plenty night – windows thrown wide open and the harbour bathed in moonlight. It was breathtaking, a wonderful advertisement for the city.

We didn't really need to eat. The wine, the mood and the setting were enough.

Then I heard the level crossing bells ringing down at Dive Crescent and I thought the moment would be destroyed by a KiwiRail DL locomotive hauling another forest to
Sulphur Point.

But it was a show stopper.

The entire restaurant stopped to watch the DL rumble through.

'Wow” was the reaction at our table. And we watched the DL as it crawled across the rail bridge and into the night at Matapihi.

It just needed some train-hoppers and Arlo Guthrie banging out ‘City of New Orleans' and the scene would have been complete.

So we locals may look at it as just a train track, an inconvenience or an eyesore, but to others it's a little bit of frontier town in a sophisticated cosmopolitan city.

Something to stop, watch and enjoy. I view trains in downtown Tauranga very differently now.

Murray McKay, Otumoetai.