One and a half miles past Ōhaupō a gang of 14 men, all casual labourers, were working in a ballast pit under the direction of Ganger Hyde. The pit was used for ballasting the Rukuhia swamp and had a railway siding leading in from the north of the main trunk line.
It was around 3.45 on a March afternoon in 1911 and the men, working about 12 feet apart, were breaking down ground for a load in the morning. The work was arduous, the ground being particularly hard. The pit, over 20ft deep, was clayey on the top with a vein about halfway up of a peculiar soapy formation, below which was gravelly clay.
The men filled wagons with the broken soil, the end of their workday in sight. Without any warning the ground suddenly gave way. Ganger Hide only just registered the coming danger and immediately called out but, it was too late. Around 150 tons of earth came away, burying three men. Another man had a narrow escape, just managing to jump clear in time. Two other men escaped the fall by running parallel with the trucks.
The work of trying to extricate the engulfed men began immediately. George Lammie, 24, was totally buried, apart from one hand, while the other two, Alex Whisker, 32, and Charles Davidson, 26, were jammed up against the wagons and covered up to their necks. A messenger was despatched on a trolley to Ōhaupō to arrange for a doctor and ambulance to be in attendance at Frankton. Alex was out within three minutes, badly injured. The extrication of George and Charles took longer. Charles was saved from instant death by a large piece of clay lodging against the side of the truck which kept the other debris off him. But it was too late for George and, although rushed to Waikato Hospital from Frankton, Alex died about 8pm. Charles, a single man from Tasmania, had a shoulder injury but ultimately survived the accident.
George and Charles had joined the gang about eight days previously and were tent mates. It was Alexander’s first day of work. Experts were at a loss to account for the fall, such a thing never having happened before in similar country, and the ground in the pit being of a singularly stiff’ nature.
The inquest, at Waikato Hospital, was attended by a representative of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the Inspector of Permanent Ways. They, together with Ganger Hyde, Constable Orchard, and a jury, viewed the bodies – Alex at the hospital morgue, and George at the Frankton Hotel – before going by special train to inspect the scene of the accident.
From the appearance of the ground it seemed there was a crack running behind the lower strata, and it was apparently when this was cut into that the fall occurred. From the top of the pit the material was solid, requiring a good deal of force to break down. About four minutes before the fall a goods train for Taumarunui passed with a load of 350 tons, and this may have helped to loosen the break. The inquest, resumed at Hamilton courthouse, found that Alex and George were killed by an accidental fall of earth in the ballast pit near Ōhaupō and no one was to blame; every care having been taken by the Railway department and the ganger in charge.
Alex and George were both buried at Hamilton West. Alex was single, born in New Zealand, with family residing in Auckland. George, also single, was Scottish and had no relations in the country. His father later arranged for a headstone which bore the inscription ‘Erected by his Father John Lammie, Kidsneuk, Irvine, Scotland.’
A ballast pit, pictured in 1910.
