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About this event
Climb aboard the Gold Train and pan for gold! Join Thames School of Mines and the Thames Small Gauge Railway Station in a mining adventure that starts with a fun train ride and ends with panning for your own real gold at Thames School of Mines.
Begin your journey at Thames Small Gauge Railway and embark on a journey to the Thames Goldfields. Then, try your luck at gold panning at Thames School of Mines, where you can pan for your own real gold. Finish off with a tour of the Mineral Museum and try out their newest attraction- four QR code tours to entertain every member of the family.
At $10 a child, $5 an adult and $30 for a family (including two adults and three children) for the experience and a gold panning bag, the Gold Train is an excellent way to spend a morning or afternoon on your way up through the Coromandel, or just to enjoy the summer sun.
Organizer Thames School of Mines
Organizer of All Aboard the Gold Train
Thames School of Mines is proudly cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
Located in Thames, Coromandel we offer guided tours of the school of mines.
Step into the school to get a vivid sense of how practical science and technology was taught in our pioneering past. You’ll see authentic period equipment and classic gold rush machinery, classrooms, labs, microscopes and maps of the gold fields, a model of a whole stamper battery system and an actual small-scale stamper battery, mining documents and historic photos. The original furnace room, where gold was laboriously extracted and then assayed, is well worth a look.