Freight backlog moved

Press, 27 March 1979, Page 6

Freight backlog moved

The Railways Department was faced with a 900-tonne freight backlog and industrial action after the Christchurch-Picton line was finally reopened at 2 p.m. yesterday. The line had been closed f- ,r five days after last week’s flooding and slips n the Kaikoura area.

Yesterday morning. Christchurch railway workers announced that they would hold a stopwork meeting at 8 a.m. today in protest against the use of a Newman’s Coach Lines bus, instead of a Railways Road Services bus, to carry stranded passengers south from Picton last Friday. The stop-work meeting is expected to last about an hour. The district manager of the Railways Department in Christchurch (Mr D. M. Patchett) said yesterday that the Newman’s bus had been used “to save inconvenience to passengers, and to get them to Christchurch as quickly as possible.” “Our buses at Kaikoura

were blocked in by slips and flooding, and we would have had to send one up from Christchurch." he said. "That is a nine-hour trip each way, in those conditions, which would have meant an 18-hour delay for the train passengers who were stranded at Picton.” said Mr Patchett. “We think that we made the only sensible decision, under the circumstances,” he said. Trains and Railways Road Services buses will run as planned until S a.m. today. The Southerner, which usually leaves Christchurch at 8.40 a.m., is expected to be delayed about half an hour by the stop-work meeting

The backlog of freight at Picton, Blenheim, and Kaikoura was being moved quickly after the line re-opened at 2 p.m. yesterday.