This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Earlier this year, Kurt Kolesed produced an episode about trains, only trains, and nothing but trains, featuring strange and amazing rail cars and

routes from around the world but he ran into a little bit of a problem.

Fortunately it was the good kind of problem I had way too many train stories for a single

episode and not just my ideas but also ideas sent in my fans. And it was

pretty clear from all the tweets and emails that you beautiful nerds would be down for a second round of train stories.

So here it is, train set will be Wellington, New Zealand.

This story starts not with a train, but with a photo of a train.

When I was working on our previous episode about trains, I found this wonderful picture of this cable car in Wellington,

and I decided to use it as a lead image on our website when we released that episode.

Yes, I remember that one. It's this really lovely shot. It's a red

finicular climbing up a hill in a city with mountains in the background. You know, the

funny thing was we didn't actually talk about that finicular did we? No no we didn't. I was just

looking for you know the ultimate train picture. Plus I figured it's a funicular that's something you would enjoy.

Yeah of course. You know who didn't enjoy it, New Zealanders?

They were very polite about it, but it was clear that seeing an image had gotten more than a few

Wellingtonians excited about their city being featured on the show.

So I started chatting with a friend who lives in Wellington and well I'll just let her set the scene.

One of the first things you notice when you move to Wellington is these funny little rails going up the hill as you drive along and you're like, well what the heck is that? Is that an elevator?

That's my friend and de facto New Zealand correspondent Pepper.

I'm Pepper raccoon and I'm an artist from Wellington, New Zealand.

Her name is Pepper raccoon?

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