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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 3 (June 1, 1936)

Heroes of the Rail — New Zealand's Greatest Transport Service. — Glimpses Of The Personnel

page 9

Heroes of the Rail
New Zealand's Greatest Transport Service.
Glimpses Of The Personnel.

(W. W. Stewart Collection). A camera study at midnight in the cab of a New Zealand express locomotive.

(W. W. Stewart Collection).
A camera study at midnight in the cab of a New Zealand express locomotive.

We were talking of dictators and their quaint doctrine that, in some way, war purifies men, and brings out the great qualities in mankind; heroism and self sacrifice and stern purpose. Somebody said, “What a ridiculous doctrine! War mostly consists in ‘drill and drudgery’; there are any amount of opportunities for heroism and any amount of dare-devils demonstrate that in peace time. What about the chap that tries a germ in his arm to test its real virulence? Or the airman who makes a pioneer flight over the ocean? Or the speed king, the Antarctic explorer, the Mount Everest team and a dozen others?” And I said, “Have you ever seen a railway shunter leaping about in the middle of the night in the dark and drizzle to hurry a late goods train away?”

And so this article came to be written.

It is dedicated to the enlightenment of that vast body of the public who use the railways without the slightest knowledge of the endless toil and selfeffacing endeavour of tens of thousands of New Zealanders whose night and day work makes the smooth running of the gigantic transport machine of our railways possible. We are accustomed to jumping out at Taumarunui, for instance, at midnight, after making several vows to turn in and go to sleep. The station is a blaze of lights, and on the lines alongside a sleepy glance shows that there are vans and moving figures, all apparently in a hurry. We might notice the train examiner as he plays his carillon, tapping the wheels. The quick dash over to the refreshment rooms is usually accompanied by a slight feeling of impatience that the girl does not have six pairs of hands. One more good story, and off to sleep is the next move, and how few there are who give any thought, either to that hive of working folk left behind to go on toiling for hours yet, or to the fireman steadily stoking as mountain, river, viaduct and tunnel, slip by as the express thunders on under the stars. It is a phenomenon of our complex modern life, this lack of knowledge of “How the other fellow lives.” It is not confined to railway users about railway workers. I remember lunching with two ladies from a sheepfarm who were staying in one of the hilly streets leading down to Wellington's business area.
(Rly. Publicity photo.) A rush job. Relaying Gang at work, under the glare of electric light, in the Wellington station yard.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A rush job. Relaying Gang at work, under the glare of electric light, in the Wellington station yard.

They said, “The most extraordinary thing happened last night. We hardly got a wink of sleep after about two in the morning; a steady procession of people started about then; tramp, tramp, tramp until breakfast time; has anything happened?” I explained that this was a daily occurrence; these were cleaners, furnace men, stokers and all the hundred and one city workers whose duties commenced before or round about daylight, and that a considerable proportion of townsfolk worked until daylight. They were completely astonished. They had the primary producers’ complex that farmers were in some way a class of people who started work earlier than other folks and that the people of the cities went comfortably and smoothly to work at a nice easy hour. This delusion often page 10
(Rly. Publicity photo.) A driver getting his engine ready for the road.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A driver getting his engine ready for the road.

affects people about what is known as the “Guv'ment,” or the Civil Service. When figures are quoted to show the high proportion of our people that are on the pay roll of the State, and the enormous cost of their services, the orator usually forgets that the greater percentage of these are in Thomas Carlyle's words “toil-worn craftsmen,” and that their working hours contain a substantial ratio of all-night toil, and the grinding exaction of allweather effort.

The Railway citizen-forces contain more of these modest men of mettle and quiet devotion than any other organisation in the Dominion. Now let us consider them in some sort of detail.

The Locomotive Branch will be taken first because it is more in the eye of the traveller than any of the rest. When a lad joins the service here, he first becomes a cleaner and his badge is a well-used piece of cotton waste, and his guerdon, an oil can.

He has to learn his engine, and the machine parts of everything that need attention. The job requires intelligence ceaseless industry and watchfulness. His objective is to become an acting-fireman, then fireman, then acting-driver, and at last, engine driver. Upon the fireman and his efficiency depends the rhythmic swing of the locomotive as it hauls its enormous load over the rails. He has to have knowledge as the verse goes “of a number of things,” and his figure is a familiar one in the glow of the light as the fire doors open and, with deft and easy action, he fills the furnace. He has very little room, and the ordinary strong man would be in physical agony after a few hours of it. The engine driver is a mighty personality, worth all the adoration he has had from thousands of boyish hearts in their early dream-days. The guard may be the captain of the great steel landship that carries its freight of humans and goods along the winding rail routes, but the driver is the chief engineer.

In the blaze of his headlights he watches for the possible slip, or the broken bridge. He is responsible for the condition of the enormous and
(W. W. Stewart Collection). A budding engine-driver assists his “daddy” with some minor repairs.

(W. W. Stewart Collection).
A budding engine-driver assists his “daddy” with some minor repairs.

intricate piece of mechanism, the locomotive. Every detail of its working parts is known to him, and every minute element of its qualities. His working hours are various and arduous. His cares do not finish when he gets out of his cab, say at four in the morning. He still has to fill in a report which deals with oil consumption, coal used, causes of delay, exact times of arrival and departure, and the rest of it. Woe betide him if he puts an extra “1” in delay or drops a stitch in his explanation of being eight minutes behind time. However, possible promotion is in front of him. He can become Locomotive Foreman or Road Foreman. It should be said, too, that, given other qualifications, no position in his branch is forbidden to him.

Consider for a moment, now, what is known as the “three-legged gang.” This is for locations that do not justify a full double crew. It consists of an engine driver, a fireman who sometimes becomes an acting-driver, and a cleaner who similarly sometimes acts as a fireman. When the fireman is having his spell, for instance, the train is taken out by the engine driver and the cleaner. Hours must be anyhow for this class of activity, and, naturally, each of the trio, has to know individually each facet of the job.

The train examiner, in the grey dawn, or the midnight hour (and in between), can be heard at every stopping page 11
(Rly. Publicity photo.) A bridge repair job in progress.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A bridge repair job in progress.

place. There is no doubt about the proper manning of the Locomotive trenches.

The Maintenance Branch comes next. When the train roars by a hillside where there is a lonely railway cottage with the chimney smoking at five in the morning, you can place that as the spot where a ganger lives. Under him are half a dozen or so surfacemen. These are the unnoticed heroes who watch for a sliver off a rail, look after the condition of fishbolts, plates and spikes, care for the joints and rail fastenings, the clearances, and clear the drains and mend the fences. They cluster most thickly where the curves are worst. It should be mentioned here that New Zealand has more curves in its railway system than any land on earth, and curves are sources of endless trouble. The All Blacks of this force are the relay gangs; and there are, of course, the specialists such as bridgemen and carpenters. The former have to clamber about viaducts and bridges, testing for faults and making, in mid-air, the necessary repairs.

But it is when a big slip takes place, or a bridge washout occurs, that these men really see life. All branches of the service co-operate. Guard, driver, and fireman and a relief train assemble in quick time. The gang materialises from anywhere and nowhere with clockwork precision and breathless speed. It is probably two in the morning and raining, but nobody seems to worry about food. At the scene of trouble, they tumble out in the darkness and hurl themselves like demons at the mass of crumbling hillside or debris of rotten rock. Fatigue is a forgotten thing— “get her clear” the only idea in every man's mind. Then, maybe, a kerosene tin of hot tea comes along and some hunks of bread and meat, and after a rush meal, the attack recommences. I have stood by and heard the men with their eyes on the half-done job discussing in these rushed few seconds of time taken off, ways and means of tackling the mess. I have seen a junior engineer “stop a blast” from his senior for dipping his mug in the tea so
(Rly, Publicity photo.) Surfacemen at work on a section of line near Wellington. (Distinguished overseas engineers have given special praise to the high standard of permanent way maintenance in New Zealand).

(Rly, Publicity photo.)
Surfacemen at work on a section of line near Wellington. (Distinguished overseas engineers have given special praise to the high standard of permanent way maintenance in New Zealand).

badly needed by the actual toilers. Perhaps at mid-day will come along a message from the ganger's cottage a mile along the line that a hot meal is ready for seventeen men. How it was prepared, where it came from, and how it was managed remain mysteries, and it is a hundred to one that the wife forgets or smilingly declares against putting in any claim for it. Surely there is something just as fine here as any comradeship in the trenches?
The last large division to consider is the Traffic Department. The civic private here is the porter. This is the man of all work of the service. He loads and empties vans and trucks, cleans carriages at times, and in fact “takes a hand at anything.” In his ranks are those Cinquevallis you see handling full milk cans as if they were pewter mugs, van after van, hour after hour. It is a daily vaudeville turn of prodigious strength and dexterity. I watched a porter one early morning passing out fish crates of a hundredweight and a half as if they were match boxes. Cheese crates are handled like cheese straws in their practised hands. In one day the united efforts of these men and their railway brethren moved into the port of Auckland 1,284 tons of frozen produce—over fifty tons per hour. It would entail the conscription of the population of the province to do anything like it in any other way. One of the features of our rail traffic is the page 12 page 13
(Rly. Publicity photo.) Welding the rail joints on the Tawa Flat Deviation, Wellington.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Welding the rail joints on the Tawa Flat Deviation, Wellington.

movement of goods by night, by what are known as “express goods trains.” Business men who receive their consignments, before their doors open, do not often take time to consider the night hours that have been occupied by hard work to make that delivery possible. I am not so sure that any grumbler does not deserve a sentence of one journey on one of those trains. He would have a new feeling of respect and a glow of admiration for at least one section of his fellow countrymen. From a porter the next step is to shunter. Be reminded, too, that the most portly guard of our de luxe trains, with his air of being a mixture of diplomat, man of affairs and polite but firm official, Must have been at one time a shunter. In the distribution of V.C.'s for gallantry in action on the railway front, a quite disproportionate number would go to this personnel. In my many travels lately by rail in all parts of New Zealand, I have wondered again and again at the deathless enthusiasm of these men.
A big junction yard, such as Frankton or Palmerston North, is a most impressive sight. All night, the breaking up, the re-aggregating, the marshalling of trains goes on. The vast maze of rails with its apparently endless masses of vans, engines with smoking stacks, its row upon row of parallel lines, interwoven on some pattern quite meaningless to the average watcher, make up a scene by H. G. Wells. Figures in blue dungarees leap about, apparently in breathless haste, uncoupling vans, waving signals to the driver, selecting with what looks like second sight which van should precede another, changing points, and generally taking the wildest personal chances, all to “get her through.” I landed one evening at another busy junction and had an hour to wait. I was standing at the platform edge when a figure appeared out of the darkness from the empty rails, and rushed into the station office. When he came out, again at a hand gallop, I said, “Somebody hurt?” He said, “No, the 7.30 from Waikikamukau is running an hour late and we're pushing out the 9.13 first,” or words to that effect. He dived away into the dimness, and I saw his figure dodging between moving vans with the speed of Joey Sadler. A score of times in my travels I have seen this epic; for that is the word needed to describe the proper tale of this selfless devotion to duty. And we hear folk solemnly say that,
(Rly. Publicity photo.) Repair work in progress on the Makohine Viaduct (238ft. high), North Island Main Trunk Line, New Zealand.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Repair work in progress on the Makohine Viaduct (238ft. high), North Island Main Trunk Line, New Zealand.

“You can't expect energy and initiative unless there is a possible profit.”

These men are better than “Storm Troops,” more courageous than “Alpine Chasseurs,” and they are certainly more useful in the best sense. The shunter's next move is to signalman, or storeman, and thereafter to guard. Of course, he may get a sole charge station. I have had cups of tea at several of these, the little hut beside the line, the hastily boiled billy, for there is a train at any old time. At Waharoa I saw a typical scene. We were on what is musically called a “mixed train.” It was longer than an Address-in-Reply, an enormous, rattling, jointed mechanical snake, loaded with everything conceivable from sand and gravel, to motorcars. We got to Waharoa late. Here the guard and the sole charge man got to work. The guard on these occasions reverts to his old job of shunter to give a hand, signalling, coupling and jumping like a deer in the approved fashion. I do not know yet how he managed it, but he smiled and answered quite suave'y when asked by a hot and irascible passenger why on earth we were so late, and did we stop at Okoroire, and how far was the hotel, and what arrangements had the Department in existence to have passengers met, and couldn't something be done about the heat and the dust nuisance. The tall gum trees by the station seemed to be a grin to me, but the guard put up a show like Anthony Eden. Some of these are lonely jobs. Very often the nearest farm house is some distance away, and the man has to seek his own solitary recreation. At Topuni, for instance, I found an exceedingly good page 14 self-trained artist. Honour to these heroes; they deserve it.

The guard we all know. The best verdict on him I ever heard was when a particularly irritating and persistent questioner had failed to shake his imperturbability. “They must make lovely husbands” one woman said, sighing, as he went out.

The guard selected for promotion can become passenger or goods foreman, and it is possible for him to arrive at the position of District Traffic Manager, assuming, of course, that he qualifies.

It is impossible in the scope of this article, of course, to mention all those by rank or name who qualify for the Railway Steel Cross in this great service. I have not mentioned, for instance, the refreshment room attendants who keep their smiles working after midnight or in the raw early mornings, facing a serried mass of folk all in a hurry and all showing signs of travel galls; and here and there the woman who says, “Very weak, please get me some hot water; can my little girl have cocoa made with milk?”

Bless them; they are wonderful.

Two hundred and fifty million passengers during the last ten years have been carried without the loss of a single life on our railways.

This record is due to the zealous care, the splendid sense of civic duty, and the high intelligence of the rank and file of that great organisation. These unassuming folk get no decorations and no newspaper headings. They give of themselves freely, and their courage is of the highest and their achievement of the noblest.

(Rly. Publicity photo.) A typical study of the shunter at work.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A typical study of the shunter at work.

(Rly. Publicity photo.) The Auckland-Wellington Express near Taihape, North Island, New Zealand.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Auckland-Wellington Express near Taihape, North Island, New Zealand.