THE SLIP ON THE RAILWAY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1574, 18 October 1912, Page 4

THE SLIP ON THE RAILWAY.

PASSENGERS STILL DETAINED AT | OHAICUNE. "People in Wellington do not appear to know what a serious slip this is at Ohakune," said a traveller who arrived from the north yesterday. "Everyone I've met appears to think. that the line is cleared and that through traffic has started on the old line. That is not so. The solid face ol' a bij? hill has shifted bodily out on to the line, and it will be weeks, I should say, before the great mound of mud, papa, and boulders could be removed from the track. What has been done has been tho construction of about 300 yards of temporary railway line on the gully side of the earth-slide. That is now completed and the south-bound express negotiated the deviation at slow speed yesterday successfully, and the result was that the train was only an hour overdue. _ The line, however, is still considered insecure to negotiate nfc nighttime, so the Wellington passengers liavo either to sleep on the cars or at hotels in Ohakune from the tinio they arrivo there at night until between i and 5 o clock in the morning. Before the deviation was completed earlier in ihe week tho passengers had to walk about thrco hundred yards along a muddy little track on the edge of the gully. The line just thereabouts—two miles on the Auckland side of Ohakune—will take some watching in future winters if a calamity is to be averted."