August 16, 1928, will long be remembered as a night of storm by Wellington residents. The wind blew with exceptional fury, and considerable damage was done to trees, fences, chimneys and roofs in certain localities. But the railway sea wall between Wellington and Petone suffered most, more than thirty breaches, some of them several chains in extent, were made by the wind-lashed tide in the early hours of the morning, and railway traffic over that portion of the railway through the Hutt Valley had to be suspended after 2.30 a.m. When morning broke the whole front presented a scene of desolation. Sections of line had been washed out, the track hanging in places in mid-air and in others lying down in the gaping gaps left by the encroaching tide. The outer set of rails suffered most, but there were several places where both sets were rendered quite unfit to carry traffic.

Maintenance gangs were quickly on the job and they worked heroically against the most severely adverse weather conditions to make the line once more capable of carrying traffic. So well did they do this that by 4 p.m. the following afternoon railway traffic was resumed on the inner line and a restricted timetable was put into operation.