I used to catch the Bay Express when I first moved to Wellington for uni back in '99. It was about $16.50 to get to Southern Hawkes Bay, and took a reliable amount of time with a refreshments car on board.

When they mothballed that it was a toss up.

There was the Bay Express bus, which was a good enough service but around Christmas you'd get stuck in 2 hours of traffic trying to leave Wellington and it'd stop at the Downtown cinema 6 complex in Palmerston North (better than stopping at Intercity's crappy depot) for half an hour which made the journey take so much longer.

Or, an option for me was to grab the Capital Connection to Palmerston North & then get a pickup from someone to drive the rest of the way - that was my preferred option if coming up for a weekend away because you could have a couple beersicles at the end of a Friday worknight :)

I work remotely with a team predominantly in Wellington. I sometimes drive, sometimes fly down for office visits; if there was a train with a $60 ticket i'd probably do a lot more regular overnight visits. The trick would be it'd need to leave fairly early in the morning and aim for a late morning arrival - but a well setup train would have some table room to work on the way so it'd be fine for me.

I reckon given the other side is served with the Capital Connection, a train between Wellington & Napier should go down via Masterton which would allow it to tie in as an extra service on the existing Masterton schedule, albeit only heading up to Napier once a day. Perhaps a sweet little railcar could link Palmerston North to Woodville to get passengers between lines :)