PART OF TRAIN RUNS AWAY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 8

PART OF TRAIN RUNS AWAY

LEFT UNATTENDED ON GRADE MISHAP ON ROXBURGH LINE (P.A.) DUNEDIN, June 13. An unusual accident which involved the derailment of four waggons and a guard’s van occurred on the Roxburgh railway line about daylight on Tuesday, when part of a train which had been left on a grade moved off unattended. It gathered speed until it failed to negotiate a bend. No one was injured, and apart from damage to the rolling stock and contents there was no very serious result. The incident occurred at Round Hill, below Waitahuna, where a goods train bound for Roxburgh had difficulty in mounting the steep grade, and had to be broker, in half, leaving four waggons and the guard’s van to be picked up afterwards. While the front naif of the train went off to Waitahuna, from where the engine was to return for the remainder,, the guard applied the brakes on the van and the two leading waggons, and settled down to wait for the locomotive to come back.

It was just at daybreak about 7 a.m., that the guard thought he heard the engine returning. After releasing the brakes on the van, he walked on to the nearest bend to flag the engine on to the train. When he reached the bend, however, he discovered that the sound he had heard was made by a motor truck or a tractor, and it was when he turned back to return to his train that he saw that it was moving. The guard ran in an attempt to reach the waggons, but by this time they had gathered speed on the steep grade, ana in spite of all his efforts he could not catch up with them, and had to watch them disappear around a bend. Moving faster all the time, the waggons travelled about a mile and a half before jumping the rails at a bend. The guard’s van carried on for another half-mile before it, too, failed to negotiate a curve, and went off the line.