RAILWAY RED TAPE.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1911, Page 3

RAILWAY RED TAPE.

ALLEGED CALLOUSNESS BY OFFI CIALS.

[by telegraph—special to the star.]

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day,

The wife of Mr Richard George French, one of he workers on the Midland Railway at Cass, yesterday gave a reporter details of a case in which shi is of opinion that gross callousness was displayed -by certain Railway officials. According to his wife’s statement French met with a serious accident while at work on Saturday, March 4th. The gravity of Iris injuries does not seem to have been thoroughly realised either by French himself or his wife until two days later, .and it was then too late to bring French to Christchurch by Monday’s train. On Thursday, March 7th, French was driven in a light trap to the Cass Railway station, the ride causing him considerable pain, so that on his arrival at the station he appears to have been in a state bordering on collajise through intense pain.

Mrs French asked the guard of the goods train, which was about to leave Cass, if he would take her husband to Springfield. She had known a similar case in which passengers were carried in the goods trains over this line. She was met by a prompt refusal, and told that ‘accident or no accident” her husband would not be allowed to travel on the train. Both she and her husband pleaded hard with the guard, and that official finally gave in to their pleading, and said he . would tain French even if it cost him his billet. At this point, however, the stationmaster at Cass intervened, and positively forbade the. guard to take the man aboard the train. French had to be driven back to his hut, suffering severely from jolting, and on the following day he was driven to Cass again and brought to Christchurch by train. On his arrival he was attended by- Dr Morton Anderson who said that the man was in a very bad way, his temperature being at 127, while there were symptoms of blood poisoning caused by delay in attending to his injuries. French was at once x’emoved to the Christchurch hospital where he remains at present.

Mrs French stated that she had endeavoured to obtain from the Railway Traffic Office some expla,nation of the incident, but had failed to obtain any satisfactory answer. She added that the workers at Cass were naturally indignant at this brutal treatment of one of their number. Considering that as they were railway workers in an out of the way place the least their employers, the Government .could do in case of accident was to give them railway facilities for reaching civilisation with the least possible delay.