SLIPS ON THE MAIN TRUNK.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 132, 22 October 1912, Page 2

SLIPS ON THE MAIN TRUNK.

I WEEKS BEFORE THEY ARE CLEARED "People in Wellington do not appear to know what a serious slip this is at Ohakune," said a traveller who arrived ■ in Wellington from the north recently. •'Everyone I've met appears to think that the line is cleared and that through traffic has started on the old line. This i* not so. The solid face of a big hill has shifted bodily out on to the line, and it will he weeks, I should say, before the great mound of mud, papa and boul(ders could be removed from the track. I What has <beeu done has been the conI struction of about 300 yards of temporj ary railway line on the gully side of the I earth-slide. That is now completed and/ the south-bound express negotiated the deviation at slow speed on Thursday successfully, and the result was that the train was only an hour overdue. The line, however, is still considered insecure to negotiate at night-time, so the Wellington passengers have either to sleep on the cars or at hotels in Ohakune from the time they arrive there at night until fcetween 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning. Before the deviation was completed earlier in the week the passengers had to walk about three hundred yards along a muddy little track on the edge of tie gully, The line just thereabouts—two miles on the Auckland side of Ohakune—will take some watching in future winters if * calamity is to be averted."— Bominion.