The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1906. RAILWAY ACCIDENTS AND DEPARTMENTAL INQUIRIES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12721, 5 February 1906, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1906. RAILWAY ACCIDENTS AND DEPARTMENTAL INQUIRIES.

The recent mysterious derailment at •Momoliaki, •Wiih its miraculous immunity f ram fatal consequences, and the stall mura recent derailment of ian en-

gine in the vicinity of Wangaehu, are incidents of a kind not '"calculated to pfombtie public confidence in the railway service. We understand that at Wangaehu, as at iMomohaki, 'the accident was due to sometlhing 'being wrong with the paint®. As our readers are aware, a departmental inquiry lias been. bsM into the Momohaki affair, and, as a matter of course, the Wangaehu derailment •will be subjected to similar investigation. The Momohaki accident was of a particul airly serious character. It occurred at night to an excursion train !by which a large number of passengers wore travelling, and it was only the accidental circumstance that two or three people -wished to get off at Momohaki which averted » catastrophe of gruesome magnitude. Since the inquiry some ugly ruimours have been get afloat to the effect that fehe points had been deliberately tampered wibh. Another- suggestion is that the accident was the result of gross carelessness on the part of railway officials. It is highly probable that the Department will not be able to unravel the mystery, 'but certainly such information as it has been able to gather should be placed fully and frankly before the public. It is questionable indeed -whether, in such a case, a departmental inquiry can be said to satisfactorily meet the requirements of the public, even though publicity be given i!o the finding. We are inclined to think ■that an accident, or slhall we say an occurrence, such as that which took place at Momohaki ought to be openly inquired into by an independent tribunal; aided of course to the fullest possible extent by the officers and experts of the department. We are confirmed in this opinion fry some startling statements made by the son of the enginediriver who was dismissed from the serviice in consequence of a- train collision at 'Matamau. It will be remembered that the Premier, when at Pahiatua a few days ago, was asKed by a deputation to reconsider the cases of the driver and guard concerned in t/he Matamau collision, and that Mr Seddon replied that .it was impossible to reinstate the men. Following the Premier's statement, iMr J. E. iMarshall, of Moufcoa, a eon of the dismissed driver, wrote a letter to the "Manawatu Daily Times," in which, with much feeling, he presented his father's case to the public, and, at the same time, accused the (higher officers of the service of -being responsible for the accident for which the driver and guard were so severely punished. The writer says:—

Allow me to mention, what appears to me to be the only reason why reinstatement -was impossible. It is for the protection of those officials who drew up the time-table which was really the cause of fhe collision. If life had beeti lost, they, in reality, would have been tike cause of such, although their uelonging to snobbish officialdom protects them from the consequences of their own careless work, but which are visited on the heads of the poor hard-working iron in the lower ranks of the service, who have no big friends to help thvin in Ihek tiane of need. On the day y-hen the accfdent in question took place • Now Year's 'Day), the traffic was very h*vivy, and the hard-working drivers had ;o go all they knew how to keep up to • r>e ordinary time-table at all, knowing that if they did nob do so the "please explains," with sundry sneering and objectionable remarks would be forthcoming (being a driver's son, I know some, ■tibl-ng of the petty tyranny exercised by running-slhed foremen and other bosses). My father, who on New Year's Day was driving the ordinary goods train, arrived at MJatam.au ia little late, and, hurrying 'through his shunt-ing, was off again as soon as possible to try and make up his lost time. The train he was supposed to cross should have been •waiting far him at Matamau, as it was a special, but, nob. being there, he, under tho circumstances mentioned above, forgot all about ib and dashed on to Dannevirke. Now> sir, he 'had no instructions on his own time-table, but was supposed to wade through a mass of other men's instructions and inhere find the No. 25 marked in a particular way. This, was all tlhat protected those two trains. Though a specially busy day and 'an unusual crossing place, no one ■was stationed there ito protect the trains —no flag, no signalling box, no porter to alter the points. In fact, the whole thing was nothing but a trap into which a man iwas bound to fall sooner oir later. If there had' been no booking station near to cross the trains aJfc, th^re would have been some excuse for tho Department's wretched system of ci'ossing them at Mataimau; but with Makotoku only four miles away on one sid© and (Dannevirke six miles on the other, with stat^onmasters, porters, shunters, and signals, there was no excuse. Does it nob seem intensely ridiculous to have booking stations provided 'With protection for the crossing of 'traitie and yet use the small unprotected flag stations* only a few miles away?. To me it eeems the acme ot folly, and it must indeed eeem so to these poor harassed drivers and guards. On the day previous to the accident the two trains had crossed at their usual cresting place, which I believe is Taka. pau, a booking place, and the remarkable thing would have been if they had thought of crossing at (Matamau on the following day. On :<my father's train there were three others with the same amount iof information as himself, viz., that number—2s. They were the guards "brakesman, and fireman, all of whom forgot likewise. My father has been for 30 yeara on the Railway between Haireiia and Napier, 24 of those as driver, *nd liwa never before made a mistake of

tQiis kind. Time after time he has barely escaped death in the execution of hie duties. He 'has been a sober, industrious man, never Shirking duty, and often working' *it his engine during his off-duty time, (repairing breakages, so that Ms department (for vile ingratitude) might be (saved trouble and expanse. And what is his final reward? To be cast off at last in ibis old age for a flagrant mistake on the part of snobbish," officialdom. 'Such an error should not be possible, except by the mistake of <a signalmian; certainly the lives of passengers should never be entrulsted to such a. fickle tiring as man's memory, for if such be done an accident must happen Sooner or Hater, and in this case ib (has" unfortunately happened later, when the driver is.getting on in years, and, bsing uneducated and haying become fairly wedded to his engine, will find it vetry difficult to settle down to any lotiher work, «specially as it. is one of the rotten rules of the department thiat drivc-ns' certificates are useless off the railway looomotive, and that while in the railway service they are rot allowed to go up foi'.any outside <!«i:jneer's examination.

As our Palmecrstoh contemporary says, Mr Marshall's language is heated because he labours -under a vicarious sense of grievance. As the son of a man who has grown grey dn the railway service (who (has been for thirty years oh his engine performing sober, conscientious, meritorious work, and who has been dismissed when almost old enough to re-. tire), Mr Marshall commits himself to •statem<ent9 whidh are not judicial, and which are obviotisly unfair to other branches of the service. He admits that hia father suffered a lapse of memory; but he says that it is unfair tihat. the ■unfortunate results /thereof should be visited upon (him ■when the fault, in reality lies with the officials Who drew up tlhe time-table. Our contemporary argues that if the case presented by the driver's son is correct, .the Matamau collision was the direct outcome of a faulty system—<a system for -which not enginedrivers, nor guards, nor traffic managers, aire responsible, but for which those who control the. railways of. -the colony are responsible. If the facts are as stated, the regulations aire at fault. Any system which by its inherent weakness imperils human life.'is op&n to grave question. Any system . which places (human life at the mercy of -memory car. only justify itself- by- proving no alternative. This was a case, apparently, in. whdbh human lives were a£ the mercy of memory. In short, the "Manaw.itu Daily Times" submits that its correspondent's statements, if true, put the heads of tihe Department;,on .-their trial. It says: Do the regulations permit traffic managers to cross trains at "unprotected stations" (where, presumably, the tafblet system is inoperative), thereby throwing the onus on drivers and guards? and if so, is it not about time tlhat the regulations were altered? The tablet system lias been installed on < ur railways at great expense so that a& little as possible may be left to chance. It protects the officials and the public alike. But what is the use of t':«j tablet system if the regulations allow traff c managers to cross trains at " un:).*otinted stations" ? And if the regiUtions are defective (and 'the chain is only :is strong as its weakest link), why should the onus fall witih crushing emphasis en one or two branches of the service only ? Tho lesson of tliid.oaee is that a depai'tmental inquiry, conducted i>y* officers who may possibly be interested, is not the most satisfactory method of investi-, gating railway aiccidents. Here, for in. stance, is a driver dismissed, 'after departmental investigation, for ' a/d docident for whech it is stated othex-s much higher in *he sei-vioe were primafi'y re-> sponsible. We do not suggest that Driver (Marshall was improperly di-ji^s-, cd. But we do think that the pu'.-'ic are entitled to know why he was' instructed to "cross trains" at" an \n^ usual" place on an "especially busy day," why that "unusual" and un>ro-' tect-ed crossing place was selected instead of a properly equipped station, and whether it is customary for a driver in such a case to have to rely solely on hi' 3 memory? Aud we do think, as we have already stated, tihat the public should be placed in possession of all the facts elicited at the departmental inquiry into the Momohaki accident.