'Railways'

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 4, Issue 26, 25 November 1986, Page 2

'Railways'

Your recent experience with the Railways "losing" the Bulletin's copy reminds me of the incident I had involving luggage for the 'Northerner' one stormy night last July. 1 needed to transport personal effects to Auckland and the car was already packed to the gunwales. It had been a long day but I wasn't without some facility for brilliant ideas, even at I I o'clock at night, so I decided to put the excess baggage onto the 'Northerner' and to collect it from the Auckland Railway Station later the same day. Having taken everything out of the already-packed car boot, 1 ferried the four boxes and half a dozen suitcases from the house to the Waiouru Railway Station and waited in the freezing cold for the train to appear. No staff on duty, therefore nobody to check with as to whether the train was running to time or not, so it was back to the car to take shelter and to wait, and wait. It's at times like these that one sees the great ironies of life; we can put a man on the moon and bring him back to earth safely; we can perform heart transplants successfully; we can tell the sex of unborn babies; perfect supersonic flight; direct-dial the other side of the world, even prophesy the weather, yet we can't tell people

whether the 'Northerner' is running to time! Anyway — at least it was running. Along it comes, 40 minutes late. I've gone to the trouble of packing all my luggage onto a trolley to make everything nice and simple. Pointing the trolley in the direction of the Guard 's Van I tried to make progress into the teeth of an 80-miles-per-hour gale. The rain was belting down and the temperature was about 40° below. The Guard meets me halfway between the Station and the end of the train and is the bearer of bad news. "No room in that van", he says unhelpfully. "You won't get any of that gear in there. You'll have to put it into the carriage behind the engine up there." 1 man-handle the trolley through 180 degrees and begin to push it to the other end of the platform. The Guard follows along behind. At the northern end of the platform — where the concrete meets the metalled walkway — it's not possible to push a laden trolley through gravel three inches deep yet the carriage 1 was heading for was still 20 yards distant. The Guard was still at hand so I said: "Look, l'm not going to get this load there on this trolley. I've run out of platform, You're going to have to get the driver to back the train up 20

yards so that 1 can pack this luggage onto it." "Oh, no. We can't back up the train," he says. "The train can't back up." "Of course it can," 1 tell him. "I've lived here for 15 years — right alongside the track — and I've seen trains back up dozens of times." "No. They must have been freight trains you saw backing. Not passenger trains. We can't back up passenger trains." Yes, that could be right, I think to myself, feeling more helpless by the minute. "Well, how do I get this stuff onto the train now, then,"? I asked. "You're going to have to carry it off the trolley up to the train", he says. He looks at his watch. "Look", he says, "We're already running late. You haven't got time to put all that luggage onto this train right now. We've got to go." Flabbergasted, I ask: "What do I do now then?" "You'll just have to put it onto another train. It can't go on this one. There's no room. And we haven't got the time anyway." With that, the Guard jumped onto the train, holds out the green flag, blows his whistle, and disappears into the warmth of the carriage! Driving back home again it runs through my mind: "l'm sure this is the same Railways that advertises itself as 'No. 1 in Freight'.".

Flabbergasted Waiouru