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New Zealand Railways KA 949

KA 949 is one of the more well-known members of her class, but for the wrong reason. I’m going to come to that in a minute.

She was built at NZR’s Hutt Workshops in 1939, and originally carried the ugly streamlining fitted to all (but two) KA’s and all six KB’s from new. This pseudo streamlining was designed to hide the ACFI feedwater heater equipment. After World War 2, the ACFI equipment was removed because it was deemed too expensive, thus giving the KA’s a much nicer look.

949 had a fairly normal service life until the night of December 24th, 1953. That was the night of the Tangiwai disaster, when an overnight Wellington to Auckland service - consisting of 11 coaches hauled by KA 949 - went off the end of a destroyed bridge and into the Whangaehu River. The locomotive and five coaches ended up in the river, with the sixth coach following a little while later after dangling precariously off the edge of the bridge for several minutes.

Tragically 151 people lost their lives in the disaster. But if it wasn’t for the efforts of driver Charles Parker and fireman Lance Redman (who were among the dead), things would have been a whole lot worse. The disaster was caused by a lahar from Mount Ruapehu, which destroyed the bridge at Tangiwai just minutes before KA 949 came along. A lahar is a flowing torrent of mud, rocks, boulders and other debris.

KA 949 - despite being totally destroyed - was still taken back to Hutt Workshops. But she was never repaired and was officially written off and scrapped in 1955. Today diesel and electric-hauled trains do still cross the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai, and a memorial has been placed just down river to honour the victims of New Zealand’s worst railway disaster. The memorial is right next to State Highway 49; the main road from Ohakune to Waiouru.

More recently - in 2010 - surviving classmate KA 942 was disguised as KA 949 for a filming job. As part of this job she ran from Plimmerton to Otaki; the latter of whom had their station disguised as Taihape station. The film KA 942 starred in was ‘Tangiwai - A Love Story’, if I’m not mistaken.