Hardy Railway China
Hardy Railway China |
| Hardy Railway China has
a place in History When 78 year old Edna Rice started work in the Paekakariki Railway Station Refreshment rooms back in 1928 there was little danger of breaking the cups and saucers. They were those lovely thick ones that seemed to break only if they were thrown at bridges - a favourite hobby of bored university students on their way between Wellington and Auckland on the nightly express or limited. Each refreshment room had its own coloured and numbered cups and saucers - Paekak's were No 2. Travellers would take them on board to drink their tea and the guards would collect them to be offloaded at the next refreshment room on the line. "Boxes of them would come in absolutely filthy", Mrs Rice said. "We would have two big sinks full of them to be washed and rinsed. Did they wash those that belonged to other stations ? Not likely! "They went back dirty," she laughed. Mrs Rice, who has lived in Paekakariki most of her life, knew the station well before she went to work there at the age of 16. The school was on the main road and on the way she would pop into the tea-rooms , then privately operated, to talk to the parrot. Railways took over the catering service during the eight years she worked there. Life was busy at the station in those early days. Every train stopped at Paekakariki and when there were specials, such as on Otaki Race Day, the queues for sandwiches, pies, scones, fruit squares, shortbread, rock and queen cakes were sometimes five deep. The early shift started at 5am because the first train arrived an hour later, Mrs Rice said. At that time of the morning the baking hadn't been done so the range of goodies wasn't so vast. Staff relied on the signalman to ring them as the train came through so they had five minutes in which to make the tea. Nothing was wasted. If bread was left over one day, it was soaked in milk and oven-heated so that it came out "so crisp" for the next. Sometimes a group of Maori from Otaki would disembark at Paekak to collect mussels from the rocks. When they returned with bulging sacks the guard, engine driver and fireman would willingly help load them in the guard's van - in return for a meal or two of course. When Mrs Rice was employed there the refreshment rooms had probably been in operation for 40 years or more and they continued for at least another 30 after that. Railways historian Bob Stott says it isn't documented just when they closed but he thinks it was probably at the end of 1967 when trains stopped changing to electric locos for the final leg to Wellington. By Audrey Ewan, |
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