Train Derailment at Haywards, 1943
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| Derailment At Haywards | |
| Date of Accident | 8 November 1943 |
| Train Details | NZ Railways steam locomotive and 8 carriages |
| Accident Location | Between Haywards and Andrews Railway Stations |
| Tank Engine | "WAB794" locomotive built in NZ Railways Hillside Workshops, Dunedin May 1927 |
| Passengers | Several hundred |
| # Killed | 3 |
| # Injured | 28 |
On November 8th, 1943, the 7.25am commuter train between Upper Hutt and Wellington went off the rails twenty-five minutes later at a curve in the track between the Haywards and Andrews Railway Stations, near where Manor Park is today. There were reportedly several hundred passengers on board the train. In the impact of the derailment the eight passenger carriages that the steam engine was hauling [1] piled up behind the engine, telescoping into each other. Three people were killed and twenty-eight injured making 1943 a black year for train accidents in New Zealand. Six months before, in June 1943, the Cromwell to Dunedin passenger train derailed on a curve at Hyde killing twenty-one people and injuring forty-seven.
A subsequent Board of Inquiry found that due to war-time manpower shortages, New Zealand Railways did not have adequate resources to spend on track maintenance. This had led to unattended irregularities in the condition of the track at Haywards sufficient to cause a locomotive, travelling at a speed above 30 miles an hour, to jump the tracks on a curve. The irony of the situation was that improvements had been made to the engine itself to avoid this kind of accident from happening. Were it not for the fact that the engine was being driven in reverse at the time, the accident may not have happened.
Contents
Prelude to disaster
The Wellington to Wairarapa Railway Line
Until the mid-1950s, the railway line between Wellington and Upper Hutt was part of the original Wellington to Wairarapa railway line which ran along the western side of the Hutt Valley and connected with the Rimutaka Incline north of Kaitoke.[2] Morning commuters travelling south from Upper Hutt to work in the lower Hutt Valley and in Wellington passed through Trentham to Silverstream, and continued on from there around the base of the hill at Silverstream to cross over a wooden trestle bridge built across the Hutt River in 1875 when the line was first opened. From there, heading south, the railway line turned left onto the west bank of the Hutt River. It then ran along next to the old Western Hutt Road to the Haywards and Andrews railway stations near the Manor Park Golf Course. From Manor Park the line continued on down to the Belmont and Melling stations, then on to Lower Hutt and Petone, and finally on to Wellington.[3]
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Because of the nature of the location, this original single track railway line was built for part of its length on the edge of a gorge known as the Taita Gorge which is occupied by the Hutt River. Of necessity the rail track therefore had to hug the curves of the gorge along its western bank, as did Western Hutt Road (SH 2) which ran alongside the rail track. Looking at the terrain today, it is easy to see that the problem for the contractor, Charles McKirdy, who built the line as far as Silverstream between 1874 and 1875,[4] was to make the curves in the track such that they would be safe for a steam locomotive to negotiate travelling at the average speed of an engine in the 1870s. With a properly maintained track an engine hauling carriages would take the curves at the prescribed speed for a permanent way, around 30 to 35 mph. If however the track was faulty, there would be a problem caused by the motion of the train driving around the curves.
Between 1954 and 1955 the Hutt Valley section of the Wellington to Wairarapa railway was rebuilt partly due to the advance in electrification of the tracks through the Hutt Valley after World War Two. The Haywards and Andrews railway stations, the scene of the 1943 derailment, were closed and were replaced by the current Manor Park Railway Station.[5] Manor Park then became, as it is today, the connecting point for a new two-track rail system connecting the eastern and western sides of the Hutt Valley. This change meant that whereas the original main line from Wellington had travelled up the western side of the Hutt Valley to Silverstream in 1875, continuing on to Upper Hutt in 1876, and finally on to the Wairarapa in 1878,[6] it was now re-routed through the Hutt Valley from Petone to Waterloo and Taita, crossing over from Pomare on the eastern side of the valley to join up with Manor Park on the Western side. This was a much safer line because it eliminated the dangerous curves of the old route. The new line, which is the line we see today, continued along the old short, straight, stretch on the western side to the present rail bridge which replaced the original wooden bridge, and, once across the river, bypassed, with a new straight double track, the old winding route around the base of the hill at Silverstream.
The original single-track Haywards to Melling section of the line which had operated since it was first opened in 1875, was now made redundant. However the single-track southern part of the old original line still exists today, operating from Melling to Wellington, stopping at the Hutt Railway Station along the way and connecting with the main Wellington/Hutt Valley to Wairarapa line at Petone.[7]
Trains of the period
Up until the early nineteen fifties the commuter trains that operated along the original Wellington to Wairarapa line as far as Upper Hutt, consisted of a sturdy class of New Zealand Railways steam locomotive hauling a number of long rectangular wooden carriages, usually seven to eight in number. The carriages were a standard N.Z.R. type manufactured from about 1900 to circa 1930. The construction of the carriages is of interest in understanding the nature of the terrible damage caused by the derailment at Haywards in 1943. The carriages, some of which in their restored state are still used today on steam excursion trains in New Zealand, were constructed of vertical tongue and groove timber panelling bolted to a riveted, all-steel, rectangular underframe or chassis. Four-wheeled “bogies”, or sprung wheels, supported the chassis at either end. To enter a carriage, passengers had to step up onto a platform with a safety rail, and open a wooden door which had glass windows. A platform and a door were located at both ends of the carriage.
The platforms were so designed that they connected with the adjoining carriage via a footplate so that guards could walk the whole length of the train from carriage to carriage while the train was underway. Passengers were discouraged from doing this although many did during peak travel times looking for seat.[8]
Inside the carriages had vertical sliding sash windows and were equipped with hard leather-covered bench seats stuffed with horsehair located on either side of the central aisle. These were referred to in 1943 as “old type straight-seaters”.[9] The backs of the seats could be tipped forwards or backwards depending on which direction the train was going. Lighting was supplied by gas filaments inside glass domes which hung down at intervals from the centre of the roof. On dark mornings, and in the evenings, two guards would walk through the carriages, one flipping down the glass domes, the other lighting the gas filaments with a cigarette lighter. The gaslight had a greenish glow to it, the gas being supplied from tanks which were slung on the underside of the carriage against the chassis. Although apparently substantial, train accidents nevertheless showed that these old wooden carriages were a potential death trap when involved in a collision. They were still in use in the Hutt Valley in the 1960s when the peak-hour commuter trains were hauled by electric locomotives.[10]
In the days before electric locomotives took over the task of hauling the Hutt Valley commuter trains in the 1950s, the carriages described above were hauled by steam engines of a British type built in New Zealand. They were tank engines officially classified by New Zealand Railways as “WAB” type locomotives. A tank engine, beloved by children through the British creation of Thomas the Tank Engine, is a type of locomotive that has water tanks slung on either side of the boiler with a coal-tender, or ‘bunker’ as it is termed, constructed directly behind the driver’s cab on the same chassis as the engine itself, and having its own set of wheels set in a ‘bogie’. This gives a New Zealand tank engine built in the 1920s a wheel notation of 4-6-4[11] where there are two leading wheels on either side at the front, three powered driving wheels on either side in the middle, and two trailing wheels on either side under the coal bunker. New Zealand built tank engines were adapted to the New Zealand narrow-gauge rail track system which has a 3ft 6in (1.067m) width. As explained below, this type of 4-6-4 wheel arrangement constructed on a single chassis turns out to be important in understanding the accident which happened in 1943 because it means that a tank engine is specifically designed as being bi-directional; without having a separate coal tender it can run at full speed in either direction.[12] The advantage of this was that a train of ‘straight-seater carriages’ did not have to be turned around since the seats could be arranged in whatever direction the train was going.
Tank engines were considered to be a medium sized industrial-use locomotive.[13] They were only marginally smaller than the larger British type main-line locomotives which were built in New Zealand from the First World War period through to the 1930s, and which had separate coupled tenders.[14] Tank Engines were driven on main trunk lines in the South Island and commuter lines in North Island because they were more economical to run than the bigger locomotives. For this reason in parts of the North Island it had become the practice to drive tank engines with the engine reversed, that is, the front, or chimney end of the locomotive was hooked up to the first carriage, while the coal-tender or bunker end faced forward, in the lead.[15] An attempt is made below to explain why a tank engine would be driven in this fashion on a heavily used suburban line, as it was established that this way of driving contributed significantly to the derailment at Haywards in 1943.
An accident waiting to happen
The engine hauling the Upper Hutt to Wellington morning commuter train in November 1943 was Tank Engine WAB794. This particular engine is stated to be one of the last of a batch of ten tank engines to be built in New Zealand, completed at the New Zealand Railways Hillside workshops, Dunedin, in May 1927.[16] On the day of the derailment at Haywards it was being driven in reverse.
Driving a train of eight carriages around a curve in a rail track in reverse was clearly a task requiring fine judgement on the part of an engine driver, even in normal conditions with a properly maintained track. The curve in the track at Haywards where the derailment took place was reported at the time by the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ to be in the form of a 15 chain radius (330 yards or 301.752 metres), “Drawn by a locomotive of the standard suburban-line type, the train consisted of eight carriages, the first four of which were derailed. The accident occurred on a 15-chain radius curve, only a few miles from Silverstream.”[17] It was subsequently revealed that the rails in this section of the line had reached their use-by date. Unfortunately it took two accidents for something to be done about it. It is a little reported fact that the derailment at Haywards on 8th November 1943 was preceded by a derailment with the same tank engine six feet north of the same spot, on 20th August 1943.[18]
Mrs Laurien Nelson was on the regular 7.25 am train to Wellington on the occasion of the first accident sitting in the first carriage with her sister in law, Ngaio Body, and friend, Miss Eva Ryrie. Her companions were going on their regular morning commute to work in Wellington, while Mrs Nelson was going into town on half-day leave from the telephone exchange where she worked in Upper Hutt. About twenty minutes later the engine derailed. It was taking the curve in the line between the Haywards and Andrews Railway Stations which, according to Mrs Nelson, was a “tight curve to the right”[19] away from the river and towards the Western Hutt Road. Fortunately the engine was going slow according to Mrs Nelson, but nevertheless the train derailed. Mrs Nelson described what happened, “The carriage starting shaking like an earthquake and then tipped over to the right, finishing up against the road bank. Nothing was said at the time and the line wasn’t repaired. It was war time and resources were not made available for fixing local things like that. Everyone got a fright and we all spent the rest of the morning waiting for buses to take passengers on to Wellington.”[20]
Betty Cook of Upper Hutt was also a passenger on the same 7.25am train at the time of the first accident. She was given to understand later that “loose bolts” were the cause of the accident although she had no further details.[21] Since the width of a rail track is critical, especially on curves, anything to do with bolts probably referred to the tie plates which hold the rails to the correct gauge width (in New Zealand 3ft 6in). In the rail fastening system introduced around 1900, tie plates were located at regular intervals along the outside, or ‘field side,’ of rail tracks, and were bolted to the wooden sleepers. Current usage today is to use an improved bolted ‘double shoulder’ tie plate which the rails sit on, and which holds the track to correct gauge width on both sides of the rail. Tie plates are designed so that they slope a rail slightly inwards about 1.4 degrees to provide a better grip for train wheels.[22] We do not know if the old type of tie was used on the line at Haywards in 1943, but in relation to the two accidents that year it is likely that if the tie plates were loose this would certainly have had a direct bearing on the stability of the track, especially on a curve, and the ability of the engine to maintain normal speed on it. As explained below, a curve in a rail track is constructed so that the outside rail on a track is elevated above the inside rail in order to allow a train to go around a curve at a speed than would not be possible if the track was laid flat or level.[23]
We know from the official reports that tank engine WAB794 was being driven in reverse or “bunker first”.[24] Apparently the cause of the first derailment was due to the leading bogie of the engine coming off the tracks, the “leading bogie” meaning in this case the wheels leading in the front of the engine; these wheels were normally the trailing wheels under the bunker.[25] If there were irregularities in the angle of the track due to loose tie bolts and perhaps loose ballast under the track, it was a mathematical certainty that the motion of the wheel flanges going around the curve in the track would have flexed the sides of the rails to a point where the width of the track was affected. This is a normal occurrence. However if the side of the rail head was worn, the leading wheel of the engine would slip over the top of the outer leading rail on a curve, thus causing a derailment.[26]
In spite of being derailed, tank engine WAB794 was soon back on the tracks after the accident on August 20. A Railway Workshops fitter from the Hutt Workshops, Henry Kendall, said that he overhauled WAB794 after the accident and “carried out all the repairs to the trailing bogie”, the trailing bogie being the leading bogie in the accident since the engine was being driven bunker first. Kendall said that ballast “that had been picked up from the track” was cleaned out of the bogie and the “compensating gear” had been overhauled.[27] A description of the compensating gear is given below under the heading ‘Bi-directional locomotive’ but a part of it can be seen in the photo below, located along the outside of the trailing bogie under the driver’s cab and bunker.
A Fatal Accident
The second derailment
Three months after the first accident, the same thing happened again at the same locality on the line at Haywards. This time the train may have been going slightly faster but still within the regulation speed limit and, failing to take the curve, the engine went completely off the rails. It ploughed ahead for about 70 yards (65 metres) and, coming to a halt, fell over on its side hard up against the road bank on the right-hand side of the track[28] as can be seen in the photo below. With the engine coming to a dead stop, the carriages behind continued moving forward, telescoping into each other behind the stationary locomotive with fatal results for some of the passengers in the first carriage.
In the scene of devastation that followed it was clear that the first four carriages behind the engine were the ones that were most seriously affected by the impact of the accident. The first carriage was completely demolished, except for its chassis, by the second carriage which had sliced into it from behind tearing away the roof and sides and, riding over the remains, ended up beside the engine. The third carriage had telescoped hard into the second carriage demolishing the platforms at both ends, while the front end of the fourth carriage was smashed and its platform demolished where it had telescoped into the rear of the third carriage. The second, third and fourth carriages had finished up lying on their sides, leaning over toward the river, and giving the train a partially folded appearance. The first carriage, or what was left of it, was lying underneath the second carriage.[29]
The rear carriages of the train, which had also piled up end to end, were not so badly damaged. Although these carriages were partly derailed and leaning over, passengers were able to escape through the windows. Some of these passengers occupying rear compartments of the train were New Zealand soldiers who immediately began rescue work and who were probably the first to raise the alarm with the American Navy Hospital at Silverstream.[30]
The immediate task facing the rescuers was to clear away the wreckage of the first four carriages in order to get aid to some of the passengers who were still trapped inside. In this task they were assisted by United States Navy surgeons and doctors.[31] The US Navy had established at the invitation of the New Zealand government a base hospital staffed by United States Navy medical personnel at Silverstream, in August 1942, for the care and recuperation of American soldiers fighting Japanese in the Pacific.[32] The hospital buildings, built by the New Zealand Public Works Department, are still there today as a “special restored WW2 history” hotel called the ‘Silverstream Retreat’ located on Reynolds Bach Drive off the Eastern Hutt Road, opposite the scene of the accident on a rise in the hills on the eastern side of the Hutt River.[33] According to train passenger, Shirley Comesky, the Navy doctors were the first medical help to arrive on the scene. Shirley Comesky, remembered, “An American truck came from the Silverstream Hospital…Their doctors and nurses were there within minutes.”[34]
By midday a squad from the US Marine depot at Judgeford, Porirua, arrived at Haywards with a heavy road crane to assist in lifting the wreckage, a remarkable feat in itself bringing the big machine over the winding Haywards Hill road in what must have been record time.[35] The Railways Department arrived at about the same time with a travelling 40 ton crane to clear the permanent way.[36]
Archival material
In 2016 archival items containing family photographs of the accident were discovered along with a contemporary newspaper account written several days after the accident. The newspaper account is an original copy of the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ dated Thursday, November 11th, 1943, four days after the derailment. It contains first-hand reporting of factual details which have been difficult to find after seventy-three years. Some of the details are quite revealing, for example the accident is stated to have taken place on the “south side of Haywards” which gives us today a definite location, and, of even more interest, that the track was being repaired where the accident happened, a fact which indicates that the line was being maintained in spite of war-time shortages of men and materials.
The ‘Leader’ reported, “It appears that the engine, which was running in reverse, began to leave the line about a rail’s length before reaching a point where re-ballasting and re-sleepering has been taking place, and the smash occurred on this section. Up to the point of the derailment there was no disturbance of the track, which carries the standard 70lb rails on hardwood sleepers, but further on the whole section of the line over which the train had passed after leaving the rails had moved over six inches to the left under the influence of the wheels running inside the track. The permanent way between the point of the derailment and where the engine fell over on its side was in a bad state after the accident for a distance of several chains. The sleepers had shifted out toward the river, the ballasting being loose and disturbed. The wheels on the road side of the train had ridden along the outside ends of the sleepers to where the engine plunged off the line. Fish-plate bolts had been sheered off and the rails were splintered, buckled and twisted, with the line slightly depressed in places. Just where the engine had left the line the sleepers pushed forward at about and angle of 30 degrees on the right hand side of the track.”[37]
Victims of the accident
The Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ also gives an interesting account from passengers who were in the first carriage and explains why several of them, with the remarkable exception of one man who was able to walk away[38], were not able to escape fatal injury as did passengers in the other carriages. It appears that although the initial moments of the derailment were similar to those described in the first derailment in August by Mrs Nelson, the force of the smash in November swept everyone in the first carriage forward as the second carriage came over the top, trapping people underneath,
“Practically the first inkling passengers in the first carriage had that anything was amiss was a roaring noise, giving the impression that the train was running on the sleepers. Before they had time to realise the gravity of the situation they were thrown in a heap at the top end of what was left of the carriage. One passenger said he felt himself begin to slide and he was thrown on top of a heap of passengers, but was able to crawl off uninjured. He said that when he got up the seating, walls and roof of the carriage had gone, having evidently been stripped away as the passengers slid forward. Another passenger in the same carriage said he felt a jolting like that of an earthquake and there was a very sudden stop as the train ploughed to a standstill.”[39]
Both the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ and the Evening Post published the names of three people who were killed and twenty eight people who had been injured. Four of the accident victims were “jammed close together” in the wreckage of the first carriage “where they had been swept under the dislodged rear bogie of the second carriage, practically under the point where it was telescoped with the third carriage.”[40]
Two of the people who had been killed instantly were women, Mrs Ngarie Pearl Rowe and Miss Eva Ryrie who was a friend of Mrs Nelson’s sister in law, Mrs Ngaio Body. Eva was sitting next to Ngaio on the same seat.[41]
The third victim was Mr. P. G. Thomas of Trentham, who had to have his leg amputated before he could be extricated from the wreckage at 10.30 a.m. He subsequently died at Wellington Hospital during the night.[42]
The fourth accident victim, Ngaio Body, was trapped in the same location underneath Mr Thompson necessitating the amputation of her left leg below the knee before she could be extricated from the wreckage an hour after Mr. Thomas.[43] She survived, although for a time it was thought that she would not. The two leg amputations were performed by the senior American medical officer, Surgeon Commander O. R. Myers, assisted by a New Zealand Army doctor.[44]
The Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ reported that Mrs Body “was a woman who was undergoing a frightful ordeal but showing great heroism.”[45] The report on her ordeal is of interest not only because of the moral fortitude she showed, but also because it describes first-hand the physical difficulties the rescuers faced in trying to disentangle the wreckage of the train, “An attempt was made to get her out from where she was securely pinned in the wreckage. Efforts were made to jack up the end of the carriage, but no firm holding could be secured for the jacks. Wreckage was sawn away, and pulled clear with a rope, partially releasing her.
However, it was found that one of her legs was tightly scissored between two pieces of steel, which had almost severed the limb below the knee. Another amputation was performed, and still conscious, as she had been all the while, even to the extent of asking for a cigarette, she was brought out, received further attention on the side of the track, and transferred to an ambulance. She smiled and asked for her mother, who was present, before leaving for hospital, an hour after the man had been extricated.”[46]
Fred Moore, a Public Works Department civil engineer and friend of Ngaio Body’s family, took photographs of the accident which have been in the private possession of the family ever since. The photos are reproduced here. They clearly show the New Zealand soldiers who were passengers on the train. Assisted by the Americans, they carried out significant rescue work, a fact which has been largely overlooked.
The Board Of Inquiry
The Haywards train derailment of November 8th, 1943, was reported by the Evening Post on the day of the accident.[47] The Post also subsequently published the findings of the Board of Inquiry into the derailment which lasted until January 1944.
The first report from the Board of Inquiry into the derailment of 8th November 1943 was published by the Evening Post on 14 December 1943.[48] The report contained detailed evidence given by engineers and fitters from the New Zealand Railways Hutt Workshops at Woburn, Lower Hutt. Much of this evidence is of great interest from a technical point of view but at the time it was also controversial in relation to the practice of running a tank engine in reverse.
Bi-directional locomotive
It appears that tank engines were the mainstay of suburban lines in both the North and South Islands. Running a tank engine bunker first was a standard practice in Otago in the South Island, but apart from Wellington in the North Island, it was stated that it was not a common practice on suburban lines except on the Auckland-Henderson line.[49] Evidence was given that there was a total of 30 tank engines in the country in 1943. The North Island had 22 engines, 12 of which were in Auckland and 10 in Wellington.[50] A transportation superintendent from New Zealand Railways, Alan Hawken, commented that tank engines were useful because they were powerful engines that accelerated quickly and therefore maintained schedule times well.[51] Up until 1943 the tank engine in question, WAB794, had been running on the main trunk line between Dunedin and Oamaru and was one of two engines which had been transferred from the South Island to Wellington in May 1943 to deal with increased traffic on the Wellington to Upper Hutt suburban line.[52]
It became clear, therefore, that the practice of driving a tank engine in reverse was related, as might be expected, to the increased volume in traffic on the Wellington-Upper Hutt line. One can see that there was good reason for this. Figures produced at the Inquiry showed that from 31 March 1939 to 31 March 1943 the annual train mileage on the Wellington to Upper Hutt line increased by over 40 per cent, “the average trainload also increased, and that the actual load carried by the track, measured in gross-ton miles, rose by approximately 63 per cent.”[53] In view of the pressure generated by increased traffic, superintendent Hawken admitted that although an engine could be turned around at Wellington and at Upper Hutt because there were turntables there, “Having regard to timetables, it would be impracticable so far as the whole section was concerned. The whole timetable would have to be reorganised.”[54] A logical deduction from this is that time would be saved at Upper Hutt by not placing the engine on the turntable that was there. In fact there was no need to do so with a bi-directional engine. To facilitate scheduled commuter runs between Wellington and Upper Hutt, and vice-versa during peak hours, it was therefore probably the case that the first scheduled train was driven out from Wellington in the forward, chimney first running position and, once at Upper Hutt the engine uncoupled the train, steamed along into a siding around the train, then coupled up in reverse to the same carriages waiting for the scheduled return run to Wellington at 7.25 a.m.[55] At least this is how it might have been done, but the evidence given at the Inquiry does not actually say if it was done in this way. However it must be assumed that turntables were only used for other types of locomotives which had separate coal tenders and therefore could not haul a train efficiently in reverse. There is evidence to support this supposition, as one account of the second derailment at Haywards states that the first carriage was an old straight-seater with a guards van compartment in the front.[56] A guards van is usually located at the rear of a train, indicating that on this occasion neither the train nor the engine had been turned around for the run back into Wellington on 8th November 1943. It would appear that although it was convenient to do so, it was clearly felt by some people in the Railways Department that it was not good practice to drive tank engines in reverse in spite of the fact they were designed to be run this way. Superintendent Hawken commented, “That as the inquiry developed one got the impression that some people in the Department were not very fond of the WAB engines. In fact they seemed almost hostile when WABs were run bunker first.”[57] Reading between the lines of the Inquiry, one suspects that the reason for the hostility superintendent Hawken noticed was that some people in Railways felt that the trailing bogie of a tank engine was not strong enough to steer an engine around curves when an engine was being driven in reverse. The Board of Inquiry naturally sought an answer to this question by examining a departmental Assistant Chief Mechanical Engineer, Reginald Gard. According to Gard’s evidence, the trailing bogie of a tank engine was critical in maintaining the stability of the engine on the track when being driven bunker first.[58] The trailing bogies on New Zealand tank engines were, he said, built “somewhat lighter” than the leading bogies. This created a problem in relation to a tank engine’s bi-directional capability because of the tendency of trailing bogies to make tank engines “prone to derailment.”[59] The problem was the weight distribution of the engine when it encountered irregularities in a rail track such as might be found when going around curves. In order to maintain an even distribution of weight a solution was arrived at by fitting a “compensating gear” to the trailing bogie.[60] In simple terms, this improvement consisted of a replacement suspension system incorporating an ‘equalising bar’[61] built into the cast steel frame of the trailing bogie which contained the wheels and axle boxes. A conventional bogie was constructed with leaf springs supporting the frame, similar to those used on old car suspensions. The new system, based on an American design, modified the old system with the insertion of coil springs at either end of the frame. These rested on a longitudinal equaliser bar directly connected to the axle boxes at the front and rear of the frame. The bar, because of the cushioning effect of the coil springs, was therefore better able to stabilise the engine by compensating for shocks delivered to the wheels by an uneven or poorly maintained track.[62] Because of curved tracks in Otago, the compensating gear was fitted to engines in the Dunedin district, one of which was WAB794, the same locomotive which had been shifted to the Wellington suburban line.[63] While the problem of equalising the load on the axles of an engine on a curved rail track was solved with the introduction of the compensating gear, the improvement produced extra wear on the flanges of the leading and trailing wheels as well as on the “running top” and sides of the rail tracks. Chief Engineer Gard felt that this gave tank engines the reputation of being “hard on the track” especially if the engine was being driven bunker first.[64] The mechanics of this can be appreciated when it is understood that because of the weight of the side tanks and the water they carry, WAB engines had loads of 14 tons on the driving axles.[65] The critical issue was that wear on the wheels was not sufficient to produce a derailment unless the track itself was substandard. The obvious implication of this was picked up by an engineer from the Hutt Workshops who stated that because the track at Haywards where the accident happened was old and worn, he believed that there would be a tendency for the leading wheels (in this case the bogie under the coal bunker) to lift off the rails when going around a curve, especially if the engine was travelling above 30 mph (48 kph).
“The witness said that, reviewing the whole matter, they had the combination of a very heavy engine, maintained by engineers to be the hardest of all engines on the track, travelling bunker first on a curve the high leg of which, while well within safety limits, was admitted to be within one and a half years of the end of its life. There were also various irregularities in the track, some of which were admitted to have been in need of attention, and possibly the ballasting was not of the very best. He thought that the whole effect as the engine took the curve at 30 to 35 miles an hour would be to set up a movement which would finally lift the weight off the leading wheel and cause it to mount the rail. From a study of the cant it did seem that the stage was set, in a minor degree, perhaps, for a derailment.”[66]
Cant in the track
Unfortunately neither the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ or the Board of Inquiry produced any information as to which direction the ‘curve’ in the track at Haywards went, or where the ‘cant’ in the curve of the track actually was, although it is reasonable to suppose it was located on the ‘high leg’ of the track identified by the engineer from the Hutt Railway Workshops. If we assume, as Mrs Nelson said in her account of the first derailment that the curve was to the right, away from the Hutt River, the cant, or angle of the track at Haywards would have been built as a ‘positive cant’ where the left-hand side of the track was elevated higher by the ballast under the sleepers, than the lower right-hand side of the track.[67] This provides for what is known as a ‘banked turn’ for a train just as a road does for motor vehicles.[68] If, as possibly happened at the first derailment, the tie plates on the track had become loose and off-centre due to increased traffic, this may also have helped to contribute to the cant in the track becoming irregular and in turn helped to cause the flanges of the leading wheels of the engine to slip off over the top of the rails. In the case of the first derailment at Haywards this chain of cause and effect could also have led to a failure of the springs in the compensating gear of the trailing bogie although this was not mentioned by Hutt Workshops fitter Henry Kendall. To understand ‘cant’ in a rail track better, a comparison with a roadway will show a similar design. If the road is making a curve to the right the shoulder on the left-hand side of the road will be higher than the lower right-hand side of the road. This is to enable a vehicle to steer around the curve and stay on the road. It is a matter of physics that if the curve in a road or rail track is flat, the natural tendency of a vehicle is to go straight ahead and not take the curve.[69] Rail tracks are designed the same way where the intention is to enable the unpowered wheels of the train - the bogies - to steer around a curve instead of ‘hunting’ (explained in more detail below) by placing excessive pressure on the sides of the rails as would happen if the track was laid flat.[70] Steam engines, or any type of engine, do not have a steering wheel for the driver to operate, so everything depends on the track being laid out correctly so that the wheels can follow the direction of the track. The angle of cant in a rail track can be 13cm (5 inches) of ‘superelevation’ as it is called, between the inside and outside rails of a curve if the curve is going to the right as illustrated in an example from the United States below.[71] This angle is closely related to the radius of the curve.[72] The curve in the track at Haywards was stated to be 15 chains which is a fairly long curve at 301 metres.[73] Generally speaking it appears to be the case that the longer the radius of a curve, the easier it is for an engine to travel around the curve at the standard speed limit set for the track.[74] As we have seen, the evidence given at the Board of Inquiry indicates that on the day of the derailment the engine was driving at the standard speed limit for the permanent way, between 30 to 35 mph (48-56kph) which suggests that the derailment was not caused by the engine driving around the curve faster than it should have been – a fault which can, and has, caused derailments up to the present day.
Further evidence as to the direction of the curve in the track at Haywards is provided by the account given in the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ which says that the wheels on the “road side of the train” ran along the “outside ends of the sleepers to where the engine plunged off the line”. These sleepers had been “pushed forward at about an angle of 30 degrees on the right hand side of the track” while the other wheels of the train ran along the sleepers “inside the track”, shifting both the rails and their sleepers “six inches to the left” toward the river.[75] Since the road side of the train was on the right hand side of the track heading south, this outcome suggests that the cant in the line at Haywards was a superelevation of the left-hand side of the track causing the engine to derail to the right when taking a right-hand curve.
Hunting
The dislocation of the rail tracks at Haywards described by the ‘Leader’ is known to be caused by a phenomena called “hunting” in the engine. The term “hunting” was used by the Board of Inquiry in its summary of evidence.[76] It is best described as where, above a certain speed, the swaying motion of railway engine introduces a yawing of the wheel axles. When this happens dangerous forces are set up due to the flexing of the wheel flanges on the inside surface of the rails.[77] At Haywards the rail surfaces were admitted to be worn.[78] If the curve in the track set up a hunting motion due to variations in the cant of the track, there would have been a corresponding force, due to the yawing of the axles, on the worn, inner surface of the top of the rails on the “leading” side of the track. The inner side surface of a rail is where the flange of an engine wheel bears directly upon the surface for grip and stability on the track. If the surface is worn down, this, combined with the hunting action of the engine’s axles, would cause the flange of the leading wheel to climb the rail.[79] The Board therefore made it clear that the fault was not the engine but the track,
“The cause of the derailment (the report states) was the inability of a Wab engine running bunker first to respond to the inequalities in the track and the wear of the rails that was proved to exist at the time and in the vicinity of the point at which the derailment occurred. The inequalities in the track were sufficient to set up— first rolling, then "hunting" in the engine, eventually causing an unloading of weight from the outer leading bogie wheel. This enabled the flange to climb the worn inner side of the head of the outer rail, and led to the derailment of the engine and part of the train.”[80]
We know that the “inequalities in the track” referred to by the Board meant not only worn rails but variations in the cant of the track mentioned by the engineer from the Hutt Railway Workshops. Apart from the possibility of loose bolts holding, or not holding the tie plates securely, these variations could have been due to shifting ballast under the sleepers, since we also know from the Upper Hutt ‘Leader’ that the engine derailed “about a rail’s length before reaching a point where re-ballasting and re-sleepering has been taking place, and the smash occurred on this section.”[81]
Given that the engine finished up on the right-hand side of the track, it would seem that it was clearly the victim of a centrifugal or ‘rolling’ force as identified by the Board of Inquiry. To demonstrate this, a centrifugal force when going around a curve in a rail track pushes both outwards and inwards depending on the speed of a locomotive and it can therefore interfere with its centre of gravity if the cant of the track exceeds for whatever reason its maximum superelevation.[82] Literature on this subject describes this kind of problem as “an unloading of the wheels on the outside rail (high rail)”.[83] This is the same terminology used today as was used by the Board of Inquiry seventy-three years ago. It demonstrates how tank engine WAB794 derailed and also shows in which direction the curve in the track at Haywards was going. The Board of Inquiry said that due to hunting, which unloaded the weight on the front wheels of the engine, the ‘outer leading bogie wheel’ climbed the “worn inner side of the head of the outer rail.” This could only mean that the outer, or outside high rail, was on the left-hand side of the track making it the ‘high leg’ of the cant[84] and that the curve was therefore heading to the right, away from the river, and probably toward the Andrews railway station south of Haywards.[85]
An example of a wheel unloading off a rail is illustrated here using a right-curving section of track. The focus is on the left-side wheel.[86] In this scenario, what would have happened at Haywards was that the outer leading wheel on the left-hand side of the locomotive slipped off the rail to the right because (a) the engine lost its centre of gravity due to an irregularity in the superelevation of the track and (b) the resultant hunting motion caused the wheel to climb over the rail because the worn inner surface on the top of the rail failed to offer a firm grip to the wheel flange. A chain reaction would then take place, causing the front wheel on the opposite side to climb the rail on the right side of the track and then take the train with it.[87]
Lack of manpower
It transpired that the problem of inequalities in the track had in fact been known a week before the accident on 8th November. Line Ganger George Robertson, whose job it was to maintain the Haywards section of the track in a safe condition for carrying trains at the authorised speeds, stated in evidence that he and his Line Inspector had walked over the track where the accident occurred four days before the derailment. The Inspector had drawn Robertson’s attention to “defects in slack and variations in cant.”[88] The Inquiry noted that, “None of these matters at that time appeared to the Inspector or the ganger to be of an urgent nature, and it was ganger Roberson's intention to attend to them early in the following week.”[89] The irony of the situation is that the Line Inspector and his staff were not indifferent to the fact that the line was old and in need of maintenance.
The real problem facing the Railways department in 1943 was not maintenance of the sturdy tank engines, but maintenance of the tracks. Because of young men being called up for military service, the strength of the line gang maintaining the Wellington-Upper Hutt line had been reduced from six men to four to a point where the average total man hours worked per fortnight had fallen by 30 per cent.[90] It was reported that the men who were doing the work were too old for military service which meant that they were not able to do the heavy work that younger men could.[91] Under the circumstances, all the Board of Inquiry could do was recommend to the Government that every effort be made to meet the requirements of the Railways Department for sufficient manpower to properly maintain the permanent way.[92] Ganger Robertson was nevertheless commended for having “considerably improved his section since he took charge of it” and was exonerated from all blame for the derailment.[93]
Change of function
It is no surprise that the final recommendation of the Board of Inquiry was to recommend to the Chief Engineer of the Railways Department that tank engines, “should not be run bunker first until the Chief Engineer is satisfied that the permanent way has been adequately strengthened, and that he is able to maintain it at a standard sufficiently high for the safe running of this class of engine bunker first.”[94] As it turned out, between 1947 and 1957 all tank engines that were still in operation were converted to tender engines and reclassified as AB engines where the coal (subsequently oil) bunker became a separate tender.[95] The conversions meant that tank engines could no longer be run bunker first, a feature which significantly changed the original bi-directional function of tank engines which were designed, as we have seen, so that they could run at service speeds in either direction.
Postscript
The subsequent history of WAB794
The tank engine that hauled the Upper Hutt to Wellington commuter train still exists and has had an interesting history since 1943. Despite photographs taken on the day which show the engine lying on its side in a sorry looking state amidst the wreckage of the first four carriages, Locomotive WAB794 was repaired after the derailment at the Railway workshops at Woburn, in the Hutt Valley. It was completely stripped down in order that the frames (or chassis) of the engine could be annealed and then straightened.[96] Following this remarkably thorough rebuild, WAB794 returned to the Hutt Valley commuter line until 1954 when it was transferred to Wanganui. A year later in 1955 after a second overhaul, this time at the Hillside Workshops where the locomotive was originally made, it was transferred anew to the Ohai Railway Board where the engine operated between Wairio and the Ohai coal field in Otago. It continued working on this line until November 1964.[97]
By 1965 it was clear that diesel-mechanical locomotives were replacing steam. This led to an offer by the Ohai Railway Board of locomotive WAB794 to the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society for preservation. The offer was duly accepted, the transfer of ownership being facilitated by an act of Parliament (the Local legislation Act) with the result that WAB794 found itself a new home in Canterbury from 1968 to 1988, ten years of which were at Ferrymead.[98] In 1997 the locomotive was leased to the Fielding and District Steam Rail Society for a period of twenty-five years where it has now been fully restored and is used as an excursion train in the Manawatu.[99] It is stated to be one of only three surviving NZ WAB class locomotives.[100] Tank engine WAB794 can therefore be considered a significant item of national heritage today, particularly as this engine was the last of its type to be built. It is illustrated in colour as one of seven famous New Zealand steam locomotives on the attractive ‘Derek of New Zealand, NZ Heritage Trains, Steam Locomotives of New Zealand’ tea towels which are retailed by tourist souvenir shops where they are purchased by New Zealanders and overseas visitors alike.
External Links
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Acknowledgements Text and research, Dr Wayne Nelson, 2016; Layout, Jennie Henton, Hutt City Council City Archivist, February 2017
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Upper Hutt ‘Leader’, Thursday, November 11th, 1943, Page 4, ‘TRAIN SMASH ON HUTT LINE. Upper Hutt Residents Victims, Three Deaths-Many Injured.’
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References
