It’s the end of the line for these unwanted train carriages
Crunching metal, cracking glass and pounding fibres sounded out across Happy Valley in what was a train wreck of a different kind for about 50 train carriages.
Lying vacant and empty, the 20 tonne asbestos-laden bodies were ripped apart by excavators at Wellington’s landfill yesterday.
Waste operations manager Darren Hoskins said the Ganz Mavag trains were bound for South Africa in 2013 but many were left behind and put into storage. The deal to send the rest overseas fell through last year.
In late May contractors began moving the old carriages to the dump because Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) decided it was the cheapest disposal option.
What metal can be taken will be recycled by Macaulay Metals but the rest of the material will be buried in the approved asbestosdisposal site.
A third of the weight in the carriages was heavy steel, stripped from the bodies of the carriages before the diggers got to work. The bogies have been put aside for any extra metal to be taken.
Hoskins said in the 25 years he had worked at the site he had never seen a train carriage being ripped apart. Each one took about 25 minutes to dismantle.
‘‘With the assistance of two excavators they are torn apart. One at either end for stability and then basically just brutally ripped apart. We separate the top skins and they go into a separate fill area.
‘‘It’s really the end of the line here for the trains.’’
A dust-suppression machine worth an estimated $100,000 sprayed fine droplets of water over the area as the trains were torn apart to stopairborne particles spreading.
He said the asbestos would not have been harmful to anyone travelling on the trains while they were commissioned but disposing of them at the approved facility was ‘‘most responsible’’.
He suspected the interest in the disposal of the trains was sparked when the carriages were ferried through town to the dump but also because there had been some debate about their reuse.
‘‘It’s not something you see everyday coming up Taranaki St.’’
Upper Hutt’s Maymorn Railway Society snapped up a bargain – buying one of the scrapped commuter trains for just $1.
It is understood the society has a temporary accommodation with KiwiRail to store the unit but it will need to find a home and the society will recruit members to restore it.
GWRC spokesman Stephen Heath said the dollar train was a ‘‘lucky last’’ and no more would be sold now that the trains were in the process of being broken down and buried.