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The Train-Tunnel Gang

Posted on: Monday, 31 October 2005, 15:00 CST

By DICKENS, David

A nomadic band of construction workers gave life to the temporary town of Maymorn as, 50 years ago, they pushed their way through the black rock of the Rimutaka Hill to create a much-needed rail tunnel. By DAVID DICKENS.

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JEAN STRACHAN arrived in the Mangaroa Valley in 1953, and might have wondered if she should have chosen a different career. She was a 20-year-old teacher, fresh out of training college. The school at Maymorn was her first real teaching job.

There were more glamorous places to be posted. Maymorn was a temporary town, knocked together by the Ministry of Works and Development over a few months in 1950. The streets were unpaved, so the town was a dustbowl in summer and a swamp in winter. There were no gardens and no fences. The only trees were a few mangy pines on the nearby hillside.

The headmaster at the school had quit suddenly, leaving Mrs Strachan in sole charge of the school and up to 90 "lovely, beautifully looked after and very nice" kids. They were the children of civil project nomads -- families of miners and engineers who moved from one massive engineering job to the next.

In 1951, they arrived at Maymorn, on the south side of Parks Line Rd that links the Mangaroa Valley with Upper Hutt city, for what is still regarded as one of the Wellington region's biggest engineering feats -- the construction of the 8.8-kilometre railway tunnel beneath the Rimutaka Hill.

The tunnel was opened 50 years ago on November 3. Once the project was finished, the 400 workers moved on to the next project. All that's left of Maymorn today is the YMCA hall and a couple of the more robust engineers' houses.

Another camp of a similar size was built in the old army and prisoner of war camp a few kilometres north of Featherston on the Wairarapa side of the Rimutaka Hill.

Like other temporary construction towns of the day that were built next to big projects, Maymorn consisted of about 40 tiny, single-men's huts, 30 married quarters, five substantial houses built for senior American engineers, three houses of similar quality for New Zealand engineers, a cookhouse, a YMCA, where the men ate their meals and where dances and social events where held, one site office and three equipment buildings.

Temporary it might have been, but to Mrs Strachan, who now lives in Woburn, it felt every bit a real town. Because many of the tunnellers and their families knew each other before they arrived, the community was like an extended family. Mothers lived close by, ready to lend a helping hand and the children could go home for lunch. Discipline problems were rare -- the worst case Mrs Strachan remembers was of two boys arriving at school drunk after finding a stash of beer.

For Vern and Mabel Swan, Maymorn was like the other temporary towns they had lived in.

"We followed the tunnels," says Mabel. "We knew everybody as we followed each other from job to job . . . We all lived the same, no one was superior, we all talked over the fence, we were all friends and I cannot remember anyone falling out."

The Trentham races were a major event on the Maymorn social calendar, and when the Queen attended on Thursday, January 14, 1954, the village went into a frenzy. Mrs Strachan remembers that her small house was full of visitors for the occasion and "we all stood and watched her and we were very excited". Usually, the "big excitement for us was going to Upper Hutt," says Mrs Strachan.

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Work on the tunnel, started in July 1951, brought together two groups of tunnellers from the United States and New Zealand. Before the tunnel was built, all rail traffic had to endure a tortuously slow trip over the Rimutaka Hill, behind Fell-type steam engines that used a centre-rail to pull trains up the incline.

Between 300 and 400 staff were employed on the tunnel project. Two tunnel headings were dug from each end -- the eastern one bored in from the Featherston side through hard rock.

Miners dug two metres of tunnel during each eight-hour shift. Work progressed three shifts a day, 24 hours a day, six days a week. The two tunnel headings met in April 1954, the concrete lining was finished in May 1954 and work was completed in January 1955.

The only certainty tunnelling through the Rimutaka Hill was water. The workers were permanently wet with water seeping through cross beams and gushing from underground streams. Miner Ray Burt says they were wet and black and were always grubby.

Inside the tunnels, there was constant noise from the compressed air drills. "You could stand next to a guy and shout and he would just shake his head," says Mr Burt. "We had to lip read."

It was a hazardous job and Mr Burt considers himself "lucky to only have a collarbone broken from a rock fall".

Hoses fed with high-pressure compressed air could come loose from pneumatic drills and "smash your head in". A migraine-type headache afflicted anyone who smoked a handrolled cigarette after handling gelignite.

Shift boss Vern Swan was trapped for two days by a tunnel collapse. He and his team of 22 were working on the tunnel face when he was told the roof was collapsing 300 metres behind them. Conditions deteriorated, light died and ventilation was cut. The buildup of explosive methane forced Mr Swan to confiscate all tobacco and lighters, which went into the rapidly rising water.

Some of the men were "dead scared, you could see the fear in the whites of their eyes", says Mr Swan.

Their problems were minor, however, compared with the fate of the men on the other side of the collapse. "We could hear someone shouting for help, some panicked." One worker was killed in the accident on his first full day in the tunnel.

Mr Swan's team escaped death by digging a drain to let the water escape, and by blowing the head of the ventilation shaft with explosives. It was a tough call because the explosion could have set off the methane gas, which would have killed them all.

Mr Swan says the miners were hard workers, straight up, a bit like the men he knew in the army. They were men who you could have faith in and had a sixth sense when something was wrong. "We were a very close-knit team," he says.

In camp, the single men lived in tiny dry and warm huts, not much larger than office cubicles.

The married quarters were unfurnished, had no telephone or fridge, though newspapers and fresh milk came daily. Meat and groceries were delivered once a week. To stop the meat going off, it was partly cooked and stored in a meat safe before being cooked again for a meal.

After the project finished, the Maymorn and Featherston camps languished. Every decade or so, the tunnellers and their families meet for a reunion. The last, the 40th anniversary, attracted 100 people.

This weekend, the little community meets again -- along with people who lived on the old Rimutaka incline communities of Cross Creek, Summit and Kaitoke -- at Featherston.

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Source: Dominion Post

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