Rail-car Stopped To Take Child To Hospital

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 7

Rail-car Stopped To Take Child To Hospital

(N.Z. Press Association) GREYMOUTH, July 8. The Greymouth to Christchurch rail-car was “flagged down” last night in a desperate race to get a critically injured 10-year-old girl to the Grey-

mouth Hospital. Her long hair had been caught in a milking machine. She was dragged into it, suffering severe head injuries. She is Margaret Becker, daughter of Mr and Mrs W. A. Becker, dairy farmers, of Te Kinga. Her condition tonight was reported as satisfactory.

The Becker’s farm has no road access and is not connected by telephone. It is, however, on the Midland railway line but between two stations, Te Kinga and Rotomanu.

After the accident happened, during last evening’s milking, the Becker family was placed in the agonising situation of having no immediate contact with the outside world. The nearest telephone is two miles away across country.

Luckily, the rail-car, which leaves Greymouth at 6.15 p.m., was due. A member of the family rushed to the railway line and “flagged down” the rail-car. The injured girl, who had lost a considerable amount of blood, was taken aboard. The rail-car stopped further along the line and the guard, using a track telephone, got in touch with Greymouth train control. An ambulance was sent from Greymouth to Rotomanu to pick up the child.

“It seemed like hours,” Mrs Becker said of the lonely wait in the Rotomanu Railway Station for the ambulance.

Making it worse for the shocked mother was that Margaret remained conscious throughout. She kept repeating, “Mummy, I’ve lost all my hair.”

Margaret had black hair down to her waist and it was this which dragged her into the machine. The oldest of four children, she was climbing the milking shed wall to get a toy tractor for her brother when her hair became entangled.