RAILWAY MAINTENANCE

Evening Star, Issue 25083, 26 January 1944, Page 8

RAILWAY MAINTENANCE

BISQUIETINS LOSS OF MAN POWER POTENTIALLY SEHGUS POSITION (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Jan. 25. "We very strorgly recommend that every effort fce made by the Government and tie man power autnonties to meet the requirements of the Railways Department for sufficient han power properly to maintain the permanent way locomotives ani other rolling stock," states the board of inquiry in its report on the Upper Hutt derailment, which occurred near Havwards on November 8, three passengers being killed and 19 injured. " The condition of the track," the report says, " cannot, be dissociated from the weight and density of the traffic movement upoi it on the one hand and the available strength of the maintenance gangs on the other. It is disquieting, therefore, to find that against the large increases in train miles, train loads, and gross ton-miles on the Hutt Valley seciion from 1938-39 to 1942-43 there has been a marked decrease in the effective man power of the line gangs. . " We are unable to say to what extent the man power position in relation to the traffic density on the Hutt Valley section is symptomatic of the railway system as a whole. A very fair index of the general condition of the track over a period of years is, however, afforded by tie incidence of spring failures. Returns of locomotives and tender springs (plates broken) and spring-hangers broken have been obtained from two separate locomotive depots in the North Island, and charts prepared from those figures indicate a varying but definitely progressive deterioration of the position. We have been informed that man power difficulties have become acute also in the locomotive and rolling stock repair shops and in the locomotive running sheds. " It cannot be too emphatically stated that the standards of maintenance of the railway transport system, whether of track, signals, locomotive, or rolling stock, must •be kept at a high level, and in no circumstances must the 'level be allowed to fall so low as to jeopardise the public safety and the transportation requirements of the national war effort. Our investiga- • tion of the circumstances of the present derailment has afforded strong indications of a close approach to such a level, in so far, at all events, as the Hutt Valley track and the work in repair shops and in the locomotive- running sheds are concerned, and the position must be regarded as being potentially serious."