RATANA INQUIRY

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 April 1938, Page 7

RATANA INQUIRY

JASMSSrS OBOicE ILEBEEmC THE EIREW* resii mg&t- AseocrA<rroN'.l WELLINGTON. April 29. Ar the inquiry into rhe Rarana railway disaster to-day, the chairman (Sir Pranc.ist Frazer) mcrixriaiiefi- Liat a, let:rer had been received from a resident of Paraparaumu giving the names _ of two people who might be able to give valuable evidence concerning the actual rime of derailment. The letter is io he passed on to the secretary of the board so that he can communicate with rhe people mentioned in the letter.

Continuing his evidence, S. E. Gamby. locomotive road foreman, said that the engine was in first-class order. The driver of the derailed train. E. Percival, had driven it quite a lot. He had had 24 hours off duty before coming on on Friday, March 25. Gamby said that he had driven with speedometers. Personally, he did not. need them to know what, speed the engine was doing. The present engine headlights were very good indeed. When a driver was employed on a inn regularly, he had no need to look at his working time-table. If he was put on a run a portion of which, although he might be acquainted with It, he did not cover regularly, he would look up the lime-table to freshen his memory.

'Pile right was reserved to Mr. G. G. Watson (for the engine-driver) to cross-examine Gamby at a later stage if necessary. The difficulty was. said Mr. Watson, that Gamby spoke of conversations witli Percival two or three days before the derailment. It might be that when Percival was able to give evidence his account of events might give a different version of some matters.

Sir Francis Frazer agreed that the best course to adopt would be that, when the board was sitting at. Wanganui, any of the witnesses whose evidence should he contradicted could be made available again.

G. J. Mullins, a Wellington tramway conductor, said he had been requested by the board to come forward. He was a passenger on the train, with his wife; They occupied seats in the fifth carriage. The last station he remembered before the accident was Marton, where the train stopped. He remembered that at one station afterwards, which he now knew was Turakina, the train passed another. He was awake. He did not notice the train ascending the grade after passing Turakina. At. 2.10 a.m. he looked at his watch. He was trying to figure out with the aid of a time-table what time the train would be at Aramoho. The train seemed to be travelling at a normal speed. The train on which they came back did not appear to travel any faster. The speed appeared to be 25 or 30 miles an hour. It might have been a shade more or less. The first of anything of an untoward nature he noticed was some blasts of the whistle and then the screeching of brakes. Their carriage appeared to be running over the sleepers. His wife asked what had happened, and he told her to sit tight. In a few seconds the carriage came to a standstill. When the train stopped he wanted to get out. but found the rear door would not open. The door had to be forced by people in the sixth carriage. Eventually he got out and saw what had happened, and then returned to the carriage, telling the womenfolk not to be alarmed as they, were quite safe. Subsequently, after attending his wife he went outside and assisted the injured. He did not look at his watch. It was left, in his coat pocket in the carriage. It was dark and clear, and there was no sign of fog, but at daybreak there was a light fog lying rather low. He thought that roughly 20 minutes elapsed between the first sensation he had of the accident and the time he communicated by the track telephone with the railway officials at Wanganui, telling them of the disaster.

"THIRD MAN" To Sir Francis Frazer, he said that it seemed only a matter of a few seconds between the time he saw his watch showing 2.10 a.m. and the time the train piled up. It might have been a few minutes. Te had read of the alleged presence of a third man in the engine cab. He did not see a man in dungarees answering to the description given by the witness. Winstone. The only man he saw with one shoe on was a passenger who had broken his toes ami was on the bank. This man, he thought, was wearing a blue suit and a brown gabardine overcoat. He assisted the doctor to attend to him. The only man he saw in dungarees was the man he took to be Ken Miller the fireman. He helped to extricate him from the engine-cab after returning from the telephone. Miller was in such a bad way that he could not have been going around giving assistance to other people. Witness rendered first aid to him, and then gave him a good strong nip of whisky. Before giving the whisky there was no smell of alcohol. He had heard rumours that the engine crew had had drink, and he wanted to make the point clear that it was he who gave Miller the whisky. He made Miller comfortable and went to the telephone again and spoke to Mr. Hare about the ambulances. To his surprise, when the ambulances arrived they were not accompanied by doctors and nurses. He mentioned to the ambulance drivers that he did not know how they were going to get to the scene of the accident, but one of them said he knew the country well, so they proceeded over the paddocks.

I'o Mr. F. W. Furkett (a member of (he board), witness said that he saw the guard before he wont to the telephone, and to Mr. H. F. O’Leary, K.C. (for the Railway Department), he said that the guard came from the direction of the van. He heard a man say at one stage, “Don’t worry about me. I’m not supposed to be here.” He did not hear him say he was booked off, or had knocked off at Marton or any other place. The remarks he heard were after he came back from the telephone. It was Miller who made the remarks, and’’they were not addressed to anyone in particular. When he was taking the man out of the engine cab he thought at the time it was the driver or fireman. Witness could not make head or tail of the remarks. Mr. O’Leary: I suggest, Mr. Mullins that it could be made head or tail of,

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Mullins, in answer to Mr. Watson, said -liar die man who made die re marlv was dettnirely' in. xixe caß at rite engine. The other two men who assisted the witness had the man partly our. of the cab. The man was badly scalded and appeared to be in great agony. He took the remarks to be made by a man who was delirious ami in great agony, and who did not know what he was saying.

Mr. Watson suggested to the board that as a result of Mullins’s evidence it had probably arrived at the true explanation of the allegation of a third man in the engine cab. The remark was that of the delirious fireman. e Sir Francis said that considerable discrepancy was left. Of course, the witness Winstone had said that the man of whom he spoke had walked round assisting other people after being thrown out of the cab until he collapsed at 4 o’clock. Mr. Watson said that he would probably address the board later on on that point. At the moment he suggested that Mullins's evidence established a probable explanation of the mystery of the third man.

Sir Francis said that Mr. Watson had his assurance that the board was following up any lead it could get. lie understood that there were one or two pieces of information that, had come to hand that morning which might make is possible to trace the mystery a little bit further.

Replying to Mr. Watson, Mullins said that if the man described by Winstone had. as Winstone suggested, gone about continuously amongst the passengers helping them, the witness would have had ample opportunity of seeing him doing that. He had not seen any such man doing any such tiling.

At the suggestion of Sir Francis, Mr. Watson asked the witness if the man of whom he had spoken had his wife or child with him. Witness said that he did not see the matt with either wife or child. Francis Alfred Ellis, acting-loco-motive foreman at Wellington, explained the system adopted to ensure that no engine went out that was unsafe in any way. He was satisfied that the system was an adequate safeguard against a defective engine going on the track.

At this stage, to meet the wishes of counsel, the inquiry was adjourned until Monday.