Rotten rail sleepers pose risk in Buller Gorge, says union
He warned it was a ‘‘safety nightmare’’ waiting to happen if they were not checked.
KiwiRail chief executive Jim Quinn said the sleepers posed no safety risk and the company would never leave ‘‘things unsafe’’.
He said concerns about equipment had been raised so they were looking into it.
They had re-checked sleepers at random with the new process and were satisfied there was high correlation between those results and the previous ones, he said.
‘‘We never take safety trivially. We will be continuing to check all of our sleepers.’’ Quinn said some of the Peruvian sleepers were prone to rotting from the inside, so they would all be checked regularly to ensure they were ‘‘doing the job’’ and if not, they would be removed.