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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 3 (August 1, 1931)

Maze of Sidings

Maze of Sidings.

When the yards are filling up with rolling stock at the busy times, the wagons and trucks and cars pouring into the big yard like unwieldy cattle—trains of 400 tons maybe, to be broken up; when five or six hundred trucks of live stock have to be handled; when the wharves have constantly to be cleared of loaded trucks from the shipping and supplied with new empties; when the eternal butter-stores call for attention, along with wool consignments, coal supplies and five-thousand-gallon rail tanks of benzine; these are the times in the shunting yards when speed must be made the sister to efficiency. That is when gangs totalling up to fifty men are needed, working at top pressure on the intricate pattern of gleaming lines that form a maze of sidings—“breaking,” marshalling, “slipping,”
From Auckland To The Thermal Wonderland Of New Zealand. (Photo, W. W. Stewart.) The Auckland-Rotorua Express passing through Ellerslie in 1920.

From Auckland To The Thermal Wonderland Of New Zealand.
(Photo, W. W. Stewart.)
The Auckland-Rotorua Express passing through Ellerslie in 1920.

“kicking,” riding the brake, and along with it taking all the chances that the work entails.

There is a half-hour break for a cup of tea from the big black kettle in the men's hut. This is the communal house where many a choice turn of expression or symbolic term of the craft finds favour among those who follow the life of the shunter. But most of them sit eating with poker faces if a stranger looks in, and then they go on with their job, quickly and efficiently.