Rail tragedy at Hyde

At 1.45 p.m. on Friday 4 June 1943 the Cromwell–Dunedin express, travelling at speed, derailed while rounding a curve near Hyde in Central Otago. Twenty-one passengers were killed and 47 injured in what was then New Zealand’s worst-ever rail accident. The driver was later found guilty of manslaughter.

The train was carrying 113 passengers, many of them bound for the Winter Show in Dunedin or the Wingatui races (it was the start of King’s Birthday weekend). When locomotive Ab 782 left the rails, all seven carriages followed. Four of them telescoped together and several were smashed to pieces. Fortunately the crash exploded the boiler and doused the engine fire, which would otherwise probably have ignited all the carriages. The survivors did what they could for each other until help arrived at the scene 90 minutes after the accident. Rescue work continued through the night.

The board of inquiry into the accident found that the locomotive had entered the bend at perhaps 70 miles (112 km) per hour, though the speed limit for that section of track was 48 km per hour. It ruled that engine driver John Corcoran had committed a ‘serious dereliction of duty’. He was subsequently found guilty of manslaughter in the Dunedin Supreme Court and sentenced to three years’ reformative detention. Some have argued that Corcoran, fatigued after working long hours, was a scapegoat for a Railways Department happy to absolve itself of any blame.

The Hyde derailment remains the second-worst rail disaster in New Zealand’s history. It is surpassed only by the Tangiwai tragedy on Christmas Eve 1953, in which 151 lives were lost.

Image: Disaster at Hyde (Te Ara)