RAILWAY NIGHTMARE

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1934, Page 17 (Supplement)

RAILWAY NIGHTMARE

HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. NEARLY 100 TREES ON LINE. Monday was probably the first time in the history of the New Zealand railways when the whereabouts of two trains operating on the same track of line was unknown for some considerable time at either the departure or the destination station, says the Evening Post. This occurred in connection with the Masterton-Wellington and the Welling-ton-Masterton morning ma : ’ trams, following the dislocation of all communications as a result of the gale. The mail train from Wellington reached Woodside. The 25 passengers for Wellington who left Masterton on the 7.40 a.m. mail had an unenviable experience. The storm was at its peak when the train reached Waingawa, and from that point to Clareville the passengers saw large, trees lifted out by the roots and hurled alongside and in some cases across the track. The conditions were so bad when Clareville was reached that the train officials decided to return to Masterton. An effort was made by the guard to communicate with the Carterton railway station by telephone from the Clareville post office, but he was unable to get through, for the simple reason that the verandah and most. of the roof of the station had been carried away. On his return to the train the guard saw whole sections of telephone and power wires carried away when the reinforced concrete poles crashed to the roadway or were bent at angles of 45 degrees under the force of the gale. The return journey from Clareville to Masterton was even more hazardous than the outward one. “We had to literally chop our way back,” observed a train official, when the train eventually reached Masterton at 12.30 p.m, nearly five hours after its departure. “From Clareville to Waingawa,” he added, “there were 94 trees across the line, and in many cases we had to chop the trunks clean through to effect a clearance for the train.

Several of the windows of the train were broken by flying branches of trees, and the engine itself was bedecked with a large branch of a pine tree when it reached Masterton. When the train passed Waingawa the first time little or no damage had been done, but on its return seven 15-ton meat waggons and eight sheep trucks were lying flat on their sides. At Clareville the line was one mass of trees, while a little to the north a line of 22 fir trees on a bank lay broken off like matches.