HIGHLY REGARDED

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 117, 10 April 1942, Page 3

HIGHLY REGARDED

N.Z. Railway Operating Companies MAINTAINING WESTERN DESERT ROUTE CAIRO, March 28. In a Western Desert dispatch of March 24, the correspondent says that 162 miles of the Western Desert railway is now controlled by New Zealanders of the Railway Operating companies. With the completion of 70 miles of track west of the old railhead. 100 men from one company have been taken to operate the line across the Libyan border. New Zealand troops, who returned this week from forward lines, found the railway terminal complete with sidings and bulk dumps within sight of the heaps of rubble that are all that remains of the Italian fort which was one of the first points taken by their brigade in the November advance.

Some troops who drove the Axis forces from this area were among the first to cross it by rail. Because their work had been mainly on the Mersa Matruh line, controlled by the Egyptian State railways, little has been heard of this company since its return from operational work in the Syrian campaign. The high regard in which their work is held' in the Middle East was demonstrated early this year when 27 of the company's tradesmen were flown from Mersa Matruh to Benghazi to repair the equipment of the Italian railway. In three weeks they' had 100 burnt-out trucks and two locomotives fit for service. When they left, they were making a locomotive from two wrecks, one of which had been blown up after it had been used by rhe other New Zealand Operating Company on

one of the Benghazi lines during the first Libyan campaign.

Arduous Months,

The remainder of the company spent many arduous, months contending with air-raids, six to eight trains each way on their line daily, and the intricacies of a foreign system. Crews stayed on their trains as long as 36 hours without a break. Technicians and train control staff worked shifts through the day and night to keep supplies moving forward. Patrol cars covered the line constantly, watching for rails and telephone lines damaged in air raids. In an air attack on a point 12 miles from the company’s headquarters early this month two 500-pound bombs exploded a few feet from the line. No unit in the New Zealand Division has men scattered across so wide an area as that through which the operating companies work. At every station across the Western Desert, there are New Zealanders who see only trains passing -through each day for months In most cases, there are no station buildings; just a siding and two or three tents surrounded by seemingly endless desert. The headquarters of each operating company are probably the only camps in the Western Desert with hot showers, ingeniously built from scrap metal, to provide train crews with washing facilities.