History's A Disaster

Tangiwai Christmas Eve Rail Disaster

• Andrew

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A night train full of families, gifts, and holiday plans sped toward a bridge that wasn’t there anymore. We follow that chilling arc—from a crater lake’s quiet failure on Mount Ruapehu to a lahar roaring down the Whangaehu River, shredding concrete piers and erasing the Tangiwai bridge in darkness—then step into the locomotive cab as the crew sees a frantic flashlight beam and fights physics with brakes and sand, seconds too late.

We unpack how New Zealand’s landscape shapes its risks and why a non-eruptive volcanic flood can be deadlier than fire. You’ll hear the human side first: the postal worker who ran toward danger, the guard and passengers who smashed windows to pull people free, the young constable who took command until reinforcements arrived, and the Waiouru camp soldiers and local farmers who turned a chaotic riverbank into an improvised rescue line. At dawn, the destruction told a national story—twisted carriages, oil-slick mud, presents strewn along the banks—while a country grappled with identification in summer heat, coroner’s courts under pressure, and grief spread from private funerals to a state ceremony for the unknown.

We also confront a hard truth about design and class: second-class cars sat closest to the locomotive and bore almost all the fatalities. From those numbers emerged lessons that took decades to implement. We detail the lahar warning systems installed upstream—radar level sensors, RF links, fail-safe signaling, and radio alerts—and how the 2007 lahar validated the approach by stopping trains and traffic before impact. Along the way, we share moments of chance that saved lives, the awards honoring civilian courage, and the memorials that keep names alive.

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/


SPEAKER_00:

The holiday season. A time for celebrations and spending time with family and friends. And for a lot of people, that means traveling. And what could be worse than dealing with other holiday travelers, especially on Christmas Eve? Stuck in a cramped train with a bunch of other crabby people, crying kids, and just generally awful. To make everything so much worse, a flash flood just wiped out the bridge supports for the bridge your train is currently speeding towards. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we're looking into New Zealand's worst railway disaster, the Tang Awei Christmas Eve Rail Disaster. And tonight's episode is brought to you by Larry Berry's Cherry Shake Shack. Larry Berry's has expanded his menu with his take on an adult favorite, the chocolate-covered cherry mud slide, overflowing with Irish cream and coffee liqueur and cherry vodka. This mud slide features Larry Berry's signature cherry flavoring blending with the chocolatey goodness until you're drowning in flavor. Well, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas this past week and got to spend time with family and friends. And of course, made it home safe. Or, if you're still out, enjoying the holiday season and getting ready for New Year's. While today, it's largely used for moving freight back and forth, it does still offer very limited passenger service. But back in the 1950s and earlier, before the major decline in passenger trains, thanks to modern conveniences like cars and buses, it was the way to travel between the major cities. Unfortunately, at the time it was mainly an overnight service, with very limited daytime travel, which really sucks. It's 423 miles long, and traveling at night you miss out on seeing some of the most incredible sights as you make your way through the New Zealand countryside. Sites like the Rorimu Spiral? A brilliant piece of engineering that loops around and up and back over itself to climb the North Island's volcanic plateau, which covers most of the central part of the island with volcanoes and crater lakes and lava plateaus. If you want to see some active volcanoes and other things like the lakes that go along with them, New Zealand is the place to go, being a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. And also the subject of a previous episode involving a volcano. But anyways, speaking of volcanoes, Mount Rapahu, the country's largest active volcano, is also visible from the railway and at least partially responsible for tonight's disaster, but not due to an eruption. 1953 was going great for New Zealand. In May, New Zealand's most famous person, Edmund Hillary, along with his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became the first people to conquer Mount Everest when they reached the summit of the world's tallest mountain. Weeks later, Elizabeth II became Queen of the British Commonwealth. In December, Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, arrived in Auckland aboard their yacht, the Gothic. This was the first time a reigning monarch ever came to New Zealand. Most royal visits were always a brother or second cousin or some other lesser royal. So for the Queen to arrive, it was a pretty big deal for New Zealand. Nearly 75% of New Zealand's population of 2 million were excited and making plans to go see the Queen during her six-week trip through the country. Unfortunately, the Queen arrived on December 23rd, the day before tragedy would strike the nation. On Christmas Eve, the nearly full Wellington to Auckland train left the station at 3 p.m. The train was packed with excited travelers, many of them on their way to see loved ones for the holidays, others on their way to see their young queen on her historic visit to New Zealand, along with a few soldiers returning to the Waruru military camp near Tingawa. The train was a K-class steam locomotive number 949, pulling five second-class passenger cars, four first-class passenger cars, a guards van, and a postal van. Now, a van on a train is basically a specialized rail car. The guard van is also known as a brake van. On these older trains, the guards van would have a guard that controlled the brakes and watched over the train for issues like uncouplings and hotboxes. So basically, they were a safety manager who was responsible for the well-being of the train. During the nearly 12-hour long ride, people passed the time looking out the windows at the gorgeous countryside or reading. Some wandered the train and snacked in the dining car, while a few others took the time to write letters to loved ones. It was a clear and beautiful day, a great time to hit an open platform car, take in the fresh country air as the train traveled through at 40 miles per hour. Unknown to anyone aboard, at around 8 p.m., part of the natural dam around Mount Rapahou's crater lake collapsed, releasing 2 million cubic meters of water, or 500 million gallons, into the Wangahoo River, sending a 20-foot-high tidal wave full of ice, water, mud, and rock down the river. As it flowed downhill, it destroyed everything in its path, adding broken trees and debris to its growing mass. This thick river of water and mud and shit slammed into the concrete pylines of the Tangawei Railway Bridge. The pylines were smashed and shifted from their foundations. The central span was wiped out, the hole left behind, hidden in the darkness. As the train left the Tangawei station, it sped towards the bridge over the Wangahu River. Cyril Ellis, a postal worker from Tahape, had been forced to stop and turn his car around when he reached the road bridge and found it was wiped out. When he saw the light of the fast approaching train, he desperately ran towards it, waving a flashlight in an attempt to warn the driver. Unfortunately, they were nearly to the bridge with less than 700 feet to go. The engineer Charles Parker and fireman Lance Redmond did their best. They acted quickly when they saw Cyril, and then the gaping hole in the bridge growing bigger as they got closer. They killed the steam, slammed on the emergency brakes, and sanded the tracks. But it was far too late. The weight of the train buckled the severely damaged pylons. Parker and Redmond rode the locomotive as it plunged into the river of mud, dragging the coal car and all five second-class passenger cars down with it. The power of the raging river tore the cars apart, leaving very little hope of survival for those trapped inside. Inside the carriages that fell into the Wingahoo, chaos had erupted, water smashed through windows and doors, sweeping passengers out into the torrent. The fast-moving Lahar had filled the river with thick acidic mud, making swimming nearly impossible. Many passengers were trapped, pinned by seats or debris, while others were swept downstream into the darkness. Despite desperate attempts to reach those in peril, the river claimed lives quickly. Only a few managed to escape by breaking free, clinging the floating wreckage, or fighting their way to the banks, where rescuers braved dangerous conditions to pull them clear. Car Z, the first in line of the first class cars, teetered on the edge of the broken bridge. Cyril Ellis ran to the guards van and grabbed the train's guard, William Inglis. They rushed to the leading car and jumped aboard to help get people out. As they climbed aboard, the coupling broke and sent the car tumbling down. It crashed and rolled downstream before coming to a stop, wedged on the riverbank. Along with the help of another passenger, John Holman, they managed to smash out a window and got nearly everyone onto the side of the rail car. One passenger who remained trapped in her seat drowned before she could be rescued. Arthur Bell and his wife had also gotten stopped by the flooded road bridge and seen the train plunge into the river. As his wife went to raise the alarm, Arthur hurried down to help rescue survivors from another car that had landed on the riverbank. Survivors who had managed to get free were swept further downstream before they could make it ashore. The roar of the crash shattered the stillness of the night, drawing the attention of Leo Smith, Wauru's 22-year-old police constable who raced to investigate the noise. He was one of the first on the scene and directed the rescue until more senior personnel arrived from Dahpe, which had to have been a great relief. Pretty sure major disasters were not covered in 1950s police academies. Since there was no national rescue organization in 1953, multiple organizations had to come together to form the rescue effort. Members of the New Zealand Forest Service, Ministry of Works, Police, Navy personnel, groups of farmers, and other locals worked throughout the night. The Wauru military camp provided a large part of the needed manpower as well as transport and shelter for survivors and those involved in the rescue efforts. Soldiers from the camp would be some of the first on scene to help out. Though the river had gone down rapidly within 45 minutes of the accident, overnight rescue efforts were still extremely dangerous. The river was full of debris brought down in the flood and wreckage from the train. Oil and mud covered everything and everyone. The stench of oil would be a constant reminder and source of nightmares for survivors for years to come. By midnight, the first of the survivors were brought into the Wauru camp's hospital. Christmas morning, the first bodies were pulled from the river and moved to makeshift morgues nearby. With daylight coming, the full scene of destruction was revealed. The river and the surrounding areas was full of mud and rock and broken trees. Twisted and splintered rail cars lay everywhere, reminders of what was supposed to be a joyous holiday season lining the river in the form of raft and damaged Christmas presents, broken toys, and mud-covered teddy bears. Prime Minister Sidney Holland arrived at Tangaway early on Christmas morning after a high-speed drive down from Auckland. He worked to coordinate the rescue work between all the different organizations and civilians who turned out to help. While the New Zealand Army led efforts near the accident site, local farmers recovered bodies further down the Fangahu River at Fields Track, Mount View, Mangamahu, Kwangarao, Fongahu Village, and the river mouth nearly 80 miles away. The bodies were taken by trunk to Wanganui. Since it was Christmas Day, there were no newspapers published. The first the public heard of the crash was when Prime Minister Sidney Holland addressed the nation in a public broadcast. In his broadcast on Christmas Day, he asked farmers and others with property on the banks of the river as far as the sea to keep a close watch for bodies and to send reports to the nearest police station. Over the following month, many bodies were recovered from the Mangamahu section of the river by locals. Unfortunately, 20 bodies were never found and are believed to have been washed out to sea. George Twentyman, a young constable, had the unenviable task of the shitload of clerical work involved in recording bodies and property to make sure everything was kept together, which made it a hell of a practice run for when he took command of the rescue operation during the Waheen Tragedy in 1968. The Queen awarded Cyril Ellis and John Holman the George Medal for their service at Tangawa. William Inglis and Arthur Bell, who had together rescued 16 people, received the British Empire Medal. Identifying the victims is a major task following any mass casualty event. A combination of shit would come together to make this even harder in Tangawa. It was the middle of the summer, and the heat and a lack of refrigerated facilities meant that the initial identification had to be carried out as quickly as possible, and in some cases was inaccurate. Some of those killed had just come to New Zealand, so they had no relatives or local medical or dental records to help ID them. The police cleaned and laid out the bodies and coffins in a makeshift mortuary set up at the Army camp. Coroner's courts were called up at Wauru to legally determine identity and issue death certificates. Pathologist Dr. J. O. Mercer pronounced the main causes of death to be drowning and asphyxiation by silt. After a few days, the police inspector in charge, who would later become the police commissioner, Willis Brown, made the difficult decision to hold a mass identification to speed up the process. With clergy on hand to give support, he prepared the relatives for what to expect before asking them to file past the partially opened coffins. The remaining unclaimed bodies were then transferred to hospital mortuaries in Wellington and Wagano. Christmas Day services gave the country the chance to express their collective grief. Many messages of sympathy were received from overseas. Queen Elizabeth made her Christmas broadcast from Auckland, finishing with a message of sympathy for the people of New Zealand. There were more than a hundred private funerals, and on December 31st, Prince Philip attended the state funeral for 21 unidentified victims who were buried in a mass grave at Wellington's Karori Cemetery in April 1954. Information from overseas confirmed that several of these bodies had been misidentified, which meant they had to exume the graves. And lucky police recruits were given the task. Congratulations! Welcome to the police force. Now go dig up some bodies. The bodies of 16, including eight whose remains were never identified, still lie at the Tangawei National Memorial at Korori, which was dedicated in 1957. The rail disaster would claim one more death when a worker was killed during the rebuilding of the Tangawe Railway Bridge, which reopened in 1957. 148 of the 151 killed at Tangawe were traveling in a second-class carriage. Traditionally, these are located at the front of the train. These second-class cars were more affected by the noise, smoke, coal dust, and fumes of the locomotive. Shit people in first class paid to avoid. In a head-on collision or derailment, second-class passengers were at greater risk of death or injury. At Tangaway, just 28 of the more than 170 second-class passengers survived. Only one first class passenger was lost, along with the driver and fireman. Most of the passengers and the last three first class cars which remained on the track did not even know what happened to their train. Which is fucked up. You're in the middle of a major disaster and completely oblivious to what happened. The Tangleway disaster, while tragic for the nation of 2 million, was especially tragic for the Nichols family from Palmerston North and the Benton family from Martin, which each lost 5 members, and the Fitzgerald family from Lower Hut, which lost 4. Amidst the death and Carnage, however, there were some good luck stories. 17-year-old Barbara Mahey and her younger brother John had first-class tickets but could only find seats in a second-class car. After leaving Waru, the guard moved them to the last first-class carriage at the rear of the train. Almost all the occupants of their original car were killed. Christine Cole Catley and her three small children were booked to travel second-class that evening, but due to a change of plans, traveled a day earlier. For the rest of her life, she would wonder about the people who considered themselves lucky to get those tickets at the last moment. The Tangoway tragedy killed more people than the combined total of all the other rail accidents in New Zealand's history. The next worst accident happened in 1943 and in 1923, claiming 21 in 17 lives. The New Zealand Railways Department would end up installing a warning system, but it would take them nearly 50 years to put it into place. But better late than never, I guess. This Lahar warning system was put upstream in the river to alert train controls to high river flows. It was installed in 1999 to measure the river level using radar and send the level to the network control center at Wellington Railway Station via an RF link to Waro and then via the signaling network to Wellington. If the river changes level, an alarm is triggered which alerts staff to the fact. If the level indicates a significant risk, the control center sets the signals on either side of the Tangawei Bridge to danger and warns trains in the area to stay clear by radio. The system also has a fail-safe feature which automatically sends a fault signal to the control center. When this happens, trains in the area are restricted to 16 miles per hour and told to take extreme care over the Tangaway Bridge. Since 2002, it has also been backed up by the Eastern Rupahu Lahar Alarm and Warning System. A Lahar of similar magnitude to the one from 1953 occurred on March 18, 2007, and this early warning system worked as planned, stopping trains and motorists at Tangaway before the Lahar hit. The newer bridges held up to the Lahar and trains resumed operation after inspection. And just a couple quick notes, a Lahar is basically it's a volcanic mudslide. Also, pronunciations. I looked up pronunciations on some of these words. I tried my best. I think I got some of them. Not guaranteeing that though. And that was the Christmas Eve Tangawe Railway Disaster. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your app of choice. And don't forget, you can always reach out to the show at historiesandisaster at gmail.com with questions, comments, or suggestions. As well as follow the show on social media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. I'm on all of them. Except X, cause, well, fuck X. And share the episode. Your friends will love it. Take care of yourself out there. Chase that dream. Pet a penguin. Live for today, cause tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.