Dunedin's Hillside workshops may be back in action soon after a Kiwi company announced plans for a luxury train ride through the country.
Mayor Dave Cull said this evening the company with Chinese backing planned to take tourists through regional New Zealand from Auckland to Dunedin on a six-day tour, with the train crossing the Cook Strait on the rail ferry.
Passengers would then travel by coach to Queenstown.
The luxury train, the Antipodean Explorer, had just been announced.
There would be 30 carriages, and Mr Cull said there were plans for them to be refurbished at Hillside workshops, which closed in 2012.
''It's amazing,'' he said.
"We get the carriages, and then we get them back again.''
Mr Cull was attending the New Zealand Chinese Mayoral Forum in Wellington.
