EXPRESS DERAILED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25737, 8 January 1945, Page 2

EXPRESS DERAILED

A FORTUNATE ESCAPE TWO PASSENGERS INJURED (P.A.) WANGANUI, Jan. 7. Cars fitted with steel frames and anti-collision ends saved the passengers on the first express from Wellington to Auckland from serious injury when the train was derailed by a subsidence at 1.45 on Saturday morning three, miles and a-half north of the Raurimu spiral. Only two persons suffered injury. Six cars were derailed, two sliding 14 feet down an embankment and coming to rest at an angle of 45 degrees. Another was suspended over a deep hole in the railway track, being held in position by one set of its own bogies and the unbroken couplings of the next car, which was not derailed. The subsidence occurred on a slight upgrade as the train was passing over an embankment which carries the track across a short gully between two cuttings. The top of the embankment gave way when the culvert was unable to carry an abnormal volume of flood water. The locomotive, one of the heavy KA Class, got across, but the leading six cars left the rails. The tender and the rear wheels of the engine were also derailed. There were 400 passengers on the train. The two people who were injured were Mrs F. B. Smith, of 32 Todman street, Brooklyn. Wellington, head injuries; and Mr A. Nolan, of Ikamatua, West Coast, two broken ribs. They were treated by an air force doctor and nurse who were travelling on the train, and taken by taxi to the Taumarunui Hospital. After treatment at the hospital both of the injured persons were able to resume their journey by train. The Main Trunk line, in the meantime. is closed to all through traffic, express (rains being diverted via the Stratford-Okahukura route. Repair work has continued day and night since the accident and the engineers hope to have the lino open again to-mor-row morning.

SIX CARS LEAVE LINE