Passengers, Policemen Enjoy Train Excursion

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30171, 1 July 1963, Page 10

Passengers, Policemen Enjoy Train Excursion

A train excursion trip to Arthur's Pass yesterday, unmarred by incident, was enjoyed by 419 passengers. Two of the 10 carriages were occupied by a church party and another was filled with employees of a Christchurch departmental store. The weather was fine, with the sun peeping through a thick haze. This enabled all the persons on the trip to leave the train at Arthur’s Pass and enjoy the crisp mountain air outdoors. The

crowd was largely made up of teen-agers, but there was also'a good smattering of parents taking their children on walks.

Small boys had snow fights as they made their way slowly up the gorge road Several boys, who had brought their own home-made sledges with them on the train, tobogganed down the snow-covered tracks and some of the lower slopes of the Temple Basin area.

Parties of secondary school girls who attempted the' icy tracks in the Temple Basin area devised a novel method of ascending steep slopes. They used a 10-foot long scarf to link themselves.

Two policemen, a St. John Ambulance man, and a St. John Ambulance nurse made the trip, as well as three railway guards. The only call on the ambulance staff was to attend a youth who suffered a small gash above an eye while he was in the Temple Basin area. One of the constables said the excursionists were the best-behaved he had seen in years. “I didn't notice a single bottle of ajcoholic liquor on the train.” he said.

Last year, he said, seats were slashed and windows broken. Four constables on the train were then not really sufficient to keep excursionists in order. The increase in the return excursion fare from Ils to 14s might have discouraged some hooligans, he thought. On the Queen's Birthday excursion to Arthur’s Pass at the increased fare, the behaviour had also been first-class. Originality provokes originality —Goethe.