Accidents
Level crossing accidents and other incidents seemed to be synonymous with these railcars.
On 18 August 1981, half of the first and second sets derailed and rolled north of Waiouru, when the northbound service was descending curves. Passengers reported that the railcar had been travelling quickly over this section of the journey and the speed around curves just before the derailment had been concerning. The subsequent enquiry found that many of the speed restriction boards for the curves in the area were missing or misleading; a full audit of speed restrictions across the entire rail network was one of the enquiry outcomes. Four people were killed and another 16 injured. The railcars were replaced by the "Blue Fern" on Wednesdays for three years until May 1984, to allow the two remaining railcar sets to be serviced while the damaged set was being repaired.
In 1989 and again in 1990 the Blue Fern train ran instead of railcars after Silver Fern railcars were involved in accidents.
Read more about this topic: NZR RM Class (Silver Fern)
Famous quotes containing the word accidents:
“Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)