BREAKDOWN GANGS WORK ALL NIGHT AFTER KAIKOURA DERAILMENT

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 September 1950, Page 5

BREAKDOWN GANGS WORK ALL NIGHT AFTER KAIKOURA DERAILMENT

BLENHEIM, Last Night (PA) Breakdown gangs worked throughout yesterday afternoon, and last night and today, and succeeded at 6 pan. in Clearing the wreckage from the scene of yesterday s derailment at Kahautara.

Normal time-tables will operate tomorrow, with trains traversing the area at reduced speeds. Sapper R. L. Taylor, who was on leave from Addington Military Barlacks, and who travelled on the train said on reaching Blenheim that by a coincidence he and the guard, Mr G Benbow, had been talking of the possibility of slips on the line just when the crash occurred, the conversation having arisen because of the train's reduced speed. Sapper Taylor estimated that over six feet of rubble covered the line, and that the engine had almost ploughed its way through. There was one other passenger, Miss Rollason, of Kekerangu, who also travelled from Christchurch.

The force of the impact was shown by the fact that the eight leading trucks telescoped in a length of about 40 feet. The second truck frdtn the engine carried .among other things, a large drum of petrol. It was thrown forward by the impact and burst, saturating a miscellaneous collection of hay, potatoes, household .urniture, and general merchandise, which caught fire and burned fiercely along the length of the train.

The fire was not arrested until after four hours' work by the Kaikoura Fire Brigade, which towed a trailer pump 16 miles to the crash in less than half an hour. The brigade water from a creek 1600 feet away. When work ceased today the locomotive was still lying on its side alongside the slip. It will not be lifted back on to the line till after the arrival of a further 40-ton crane from Dunedin.