FORTY YEARS IN RAILWAYS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27874, 24 January 1956, Page 17

FORTY YEARS IN RAILWAYS

FOREMAN OF WORKS RETIRES MAJOR MAINTENANCE UNDERTAKINGS After 40 years in the Railways Department’s maintenance division, where duties often involve work at high pressure in difficult conditions until interrupted service is restored, Mr J. O’Shannessey, foreman of works at Christchurch, says he would again choose the same career. On his retirement yesterday he said it was a good life with plenty of avenues for advancement.

Tributes to Mr O’Shannessey were paid by the district engineer (Mr G. Ruston), the assistant district engineer (Mr L. Bentley), and Mr ft. H. Lovatt, who recently retired as assistant engineer.

Mr O’Shannessey was apprenticed m Wanganui, and in 1924 went to Greymouth as leading carpenter. • In the same year he transferred to Christchurch. In 1932 he had six months as maintenance shop foreman at Hillside, and then became bridge inspector at Timaru until 1938. In 1943 he became bridge inspector at Addington, in 1945 he was promoted to foreman of works for the Kaiapoi-Picton line, and since 1947 has been district foreman with a responsibility for the area from Kaiapoi to Glenavy. Washouts on the railway are punctuation marks throughout his career. Mr O’Shannessey can remember dozens of them which involved ticklish work, ever since his first between Patea and Waverley in 1922. In 1950 his men did a splendid job in permanently restoring the Cass bridge over‘the Waimakariri in a fortnight when four piers and 300 ft of embankment were washed away. A year later came the “job of my life,’’ when 300 ft of the Kowai bridge was destroyed by flooding. That job took a month, of almost continuous effort. In between there were more mundane undertakings—rebuilding the Woolston station which was destroyed by fire a few years ago, building the rail-car shops at Addington, and other workshops at Addington for the training of R.N.Z.A.F. men during the war. The Second World War brought other interesting assignments. Forty-thousand-gallon fuel tanks were installed by Mr O’Shannessey’s staff at Wigram and Hare wood, and other big ones went into emergency aerodromes in other parts of Canterbury. A sideline was building dummy aircraft for the camouflage of military aerodromes. Longest job about a year ago was painting the Staircase viaduct, which is 220 ft deep and 350 ft lojig. The job took six months. Mr O’Shannessey devised a lift arrangement to take the men in safety down to their working staging. In this and all other jobs he remembers best the support of his staff. Greatest regret on his retirement is that railway staff will not build the new bridge over the Waimakariri. Mr O’Shannessey said he appreciated the reasons for other arrangements, but the job would have given invaluable experience to large crews of newcomers to- the department. For this reason he is glad that the department has begun using its own staff to build railway houses. The most welcome innovation, now on the way, would be

buses to carry maintenance staff from their depots to the job, thereby eliminating separation from families with the men living in hutments, Mr O’Shannessey said.