Electric trains for Auckland now seem assured

Last Wednesday, Auckland's long-awaited $1 billion rail electrification project was given Government funding approval for a fleet of of up to 114 electric multiple unit (EMU) railcars. Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced the Cabinet had approved $500 million for electric rolling stock to start running in 2013. That is on top of a commitment of $500 million the Government inherited from the previous Labour Government to electrify Auckland's railway tracks south to Papakura and west to Swanson.

Being able to accelerate and brake faster than the diesel units they will replace, the EMUs should allow 10-minute service frequencies and, naturally, cost less to run.
But the Auckland Regional Transport Authority may still have to lease up to 13 electric locomotives to pull existing refurbished British SA carriages along the southern line.

Although the Auckland Regional Council originally sought 140 railcars, Mr Joyce said the proposed units would be longer and the overall fleet capable of carrying an equivalent number of passengers. They are expected to be more cost-effective and efficient, although numbers and dimensions remain to be finalised. $45 million of "essential" spending will include lengthening station platforms.

Electrification of the Auckland rail network was first planned in the 1940s and came closest to being realised with the Rapid Rail plans from the mid-1970s, before the Muldoon government axed them in 1976.

According to Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee in an interview last year, “Electrification will build on the remarkable momentum achieved in Auckland rail over the past five years in which patronage has grown from just over 2 million to over 7 million passenger trips per year. We are set to overtake Wellington’s rail patronage of about 11.5 million passenger trips in the next two to three years.”

You can only wonder why railway projects in Auckland seem to take ages to be actioned. The Britomart station project is probably the best known example of a highly successful project which unfathomably took several years to happen. And these works will still leave a lot of the Auckland Region unserviced by rail. In our book the Railways of New Zealand: a journey through history we included a map of the proposed rapid rail system from the 1970s - that would have covered a much greater area including the North Shore and an airport link. Oh well.

20 years since our book "The Golden Era of Fiat Railcars in New Zealand"

To mark this occasion we have produced a computer mousepad using a scene (above) which was left out of that book, as it was received past the printing deadline. This is available for $15 in our shop. These railcars at different times served all provincial centres in New Zealand (except Westport and Alexandra) from the mid-1950s until they were withdrawn in 1978 - a true halcyon era in NZ rail passenger transport history. 

 And on the subject, why is it that a small number of railfans in NZ refuse to call them Fiats and instead insist they be called Drewrys? True, the order was placed with the Drewry Car Co. of England, but this was a sales organisation for most of its life and used sub-contractors to do the actual constructions. The bodies were built at Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. with the engines from the Fiat company of Italy, and hence the origin of the most popular unofficial name. NZR only ever referred to them as the articulated railcars, and therefore Drewry has no more legitimacy as a name than Fiat. 

Another railway example of a popular unofficial name resulting from only a part of the equipment used was the 'Oerlikons' of the London and North Western Railway. These electric multiple units were built by Metropolitan-Cammell in Birmingham, but the name came from their electrical equipment which, after the outbreak of WWI, had to come from Oerlikon in Switzerland rather than from Siemens in Germany. One of these sets is now in the British National Railway Museum in York.

30 years since the Mt Erebus disaster

On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand Flight TE901, a DC-10, took off for a scenic flight from Auckland, proceeding over the South Island, the Auckland Islands, Baleny Islands and Cape Hallett to McMurdo in Antarctica. The flight would then return via Cape Hallett and Campbell Island to Christchurch and then Auckland. It got as far as the slopes of Mt Erebus (slightly higher than NZ's highest mountain of Mt Cook/Aoraki) on Ross Island in Antarctica.

What happened was not the subject of any controversy: Approaching Ross Island it appeared that the area which was approved by the operator for VMC [Visual Meteorological Condition] descents below 16,000 feet was obscured by cloud. The crew decided to descend in a clear area to the (true) North of Ross Island in two descending orbits. The aircraft's descent was continued to 1,500 feet on the flight planned track back toward Ross Island for its next turning point, Williams Field, McMurdo. The aircraft, however, was actually flying 1.5 miles East of its flight-planned track. Shortly after reaching 1,500 feet the Ground Proximity Warning System sounded. Go around power was applied but the aircraft struck the slope of Mt Erebus at 1,465 feet. The aircraft broke up and caught fire. All 257 on board were killed, making it New Zealand's worst recorded disaster, even though 57 of the victims were foreign nationals.

Why it happened was the subject of considerable controversy, however. It was quickly established that the crash had nothing to do with the aircraft. An accident investigation report by the Chief Inspector of aircraft accidents came out in May 1980. The probable cause according to this investigation was: "The decision of the captain to continue the flight at low level toward an area of poor surface and horizon definition when the crew was not certain of their position and the subsequent inability to detect the rising terrain which intercepted the aircraft's flight path."

Needless to say the pilots' families were not happy and following much public demand, the NZ Government announced a further one-man Royal Commission of Inquiry into the accident, to be performed by judge Justice Peter Mahon. In April 1981 he released his report. He concluded that: "The dominant cause of the disaster was the act of the airline in changing the computer track of the aircraft without telling the air crew." He continued: "In my opinion, therefore, the single dominant and effective cause of the disaster was the mistake made by those airline officials who programmed the aircraft to fly directly at Mt Erebus and omitted to tell the aircrew. That mistake is directly attributable, not so much to the persons who made it, but to the incompetent administrative airline procedures which made the mistake possible. In my opinion, neither Captain Collins nor First Officer Cassin nor the flight engineers made any error which contributed to the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence."

In his report, Mahon claimed airline executives and management engaged in a conspiracy to whitewash the enquiry, famously accusing them of "an orchestrated litany of lies" by covering up evidence and lying to investigators. Air New Zealand and the Civil Aviation Division were ordered to pay the costs of the inquiry, and the airline had to pay an extra fee of $150,000.

Air New Zealand appealed against Mahon's findings to the Court of Appeal, which set aside the costs order against the airline. Mahon in turn appealed to the Privy Council in London. His findings as to the cause of the accident, namely reprogramming of the aircraft's flight plan by the ground crew who then failed to inform the flight crew, had not been challenged before the Court of Appeal, and so were not challenged before the Privy Council. His conclusion that the crash was the result of the aircrew being misdirected as to their flight path, and was not due to pilot error, therefore remained. But the Board held that Mahon had acted in excess of his jurisdiction and in breach of natural justice by going on to make findings of a conspiracy by Air New Zealand to cover up the errors of the ground staff. In their judgment, delivered on 20 October 1983, the Law Lords dismissed Mahon's appeal and upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal.

Air New Zealand has long been known as an airline which has excellent front-line staff (flight and cabin crew etc) and atrocious management. On the cover of our book on the airline and its affilates' aircraft, we indirectly paid tribute to the victims of the disaster by putting one of Air NZ's DC-10's on the cover (but not the one which crashed). This book is available from our shop.

Post Office First Day Cover for the first flight to Antarctica on 15 February 1977.  The last was on 28 November 1979.

a word on the way out?

This obviously old notice was seen in Idaho.Today it is "no loitering".

another forgotten word

In response to our post on words that have come and gone, a customer has sent us this advert from 1956. Who now would have any idea what "flashmatic" meant? The remote control technology for TVs etc is of course standard nowadays.

As an aside, how does that beginning price of $US 150 compare now? About $US 1,192 according to the US inflation calculator (about the price of a full HD 42" flat screen model now) while the de-luxe model pictured at $US 400 is today the equivalent of $US 3,179.

A message for the corporate greedy

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls" - Paul Simon

100 Years of the Little Yellow Train

A notable survivor of the numerous narrow gauge trains that used to criss-cross France is the Petit Train Jaune or little yellow train which climbs into the Pyrénnées mountains in French Catalonia.

More than just a rail link from village to village, the line of Cerdanya is undoubtedly an integral part of the regional identity. The metre-gauge line connects Villefranche-de-Conflent and the international station of La Tour-de-Carol on the Spanish border, 62 km away, with 22 station halts. The track rises to almost 1,600 metres altitude and serves the highest station in France: Bolquère-Eyne. There are also impressive examples of railway engineering traversed, and just as impressive is that the 100 year old electric trains are still in use. Needless to say it is a popular tourist attraction, and the popularity has necessitated additional new trains, although the charme of the century old rolling stock can't be replaced.

Books on this topic are naturally available in the transpress on-line shop.

anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe grows

As the inevitable backlash to terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists within Europe, popular sentiment is hardening there against Muslims in general. The fiercest debate has been over the 'voile intégrale' or all-over female veil, which many find intimidating as well as an obvious disguise for criminals. The Dutch have already banned it in public and many French want to do the same.

The latest manifestation of anti-Islamic sentiment is the Volksabstimmung or referendum in Switzerland to stop the building of any more minaretts on mosques, due to be held on Sunday 29th November. Switzerland has about 400,000 Muslims, co-incidentally the same number as in the state of Texas, USA.
The feeling, however, is that the referendum will be defeated, not just because existing town planning laws regarding visual nuisance should be enough, but because the Swiss don't want to be seen intolerant of religious freedom.

The poster used by those in favour of the ban is shown as well as a photo of Muslim response.

The real Burt Munro

Most people have seen or at least know about the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" starring Anthony Hopkins as the amateur motorbike racer Burt Munro of Invercargill, who with his home-modified Indian motorbike broke speed records at the Bonneville salt flats in Utah in the early 1960s.

Roger Donaldson here presents an impressive collection of colour and monochrome photos of the real Burt Munro in the events that the movie recreated. As a bonus you get a DVD of extra footage from the movie and Donaldson's original documentary on Burt Munro.

The 288 page landscape A4 format book is available for $55 from the transpress on-line shop.

Will there be an Eric Watson Mask?

The most popular Halloween mask in the US this year was Bernie Madoff, the big time confidence trickster who cost US investors hundreds of millions of dollars and was sentenced to 150 years jail.

New Zealand's equivalent, Eric Watson, is still indulging his lavish lifestyle in the UK, San Tropez, etc, with his ill-gotten gains, as no one here has prosecuted him thanks to the toothless NZ Securities Commission.
In 1997 the American Securities and Exchange Commission came close when they found him guilty of insider trading, but let him off with a "cease and desist" warning. It is a real shame they didn't go further.

Meanwhile auditors KPMG reported on Tuesday that his Hanover Finance money-raising vehicle lost $283 million in the year to June.

And yesterday Allied Farmers threw their hat into the ring by offering to swap Watson and co-conspirator Mark Hotchin's Hanover debt for shares in themselves. Although seemingly farcical, it's unlikely Watson and Hotchin's victims will be any worse off from it, after they severely compromised their ability to chase Watson and Hotchin for it last December. Watch this space.