Crash near 1953 rail disaster site
PA Wellington The Silver Fem railcar crash yesterday in which four died, occurred only a few kilometres from the site of New Zealand’s worst railway disaster — the Tangiwai crash on Christmas Eve, 1953. The night express from Wellington to Auckland plunged into the waters of the flooded Whangaehu River at Tangiwai and 151 people died. A sudden discharge of thousands of tons of water from the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu had des-
troyed the railway bridge at Tangiwai. Many of the people on the Christmas holiday train were going to Auckland to see the Queen, who was then in New Zealand on her Coronation Commonwealth tour. The train roared into the raging river, the engine and fuel tender crashing into the opposite bank, and five carriages were immediately submerged. A sixth teetered on the edge of the bank for some time before it, too, toppled into the swirling, silty waters. Only three of the carriages remained on the rails.
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Press, 19 August 1981, Page 1
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166Crash near 1953 rail disaster site Press, 19 August 1981, Page 1
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