Tangiwai railway bridge, near Waiouru, central North Island, New Zealand

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Tangiwai railway bridge, near Waiouru, central North Island, New Zealand. Site of the Tangiwai Disaster. The Tangiwai disaster occurred at 22:21 on 24 December 1953 when the Whangaehu River bridge collapsed beneath a Wellington to Auckland express passenger train at Tangiwai, in the central North Island of New Zealand. The locomotive and first six carriages derailed into the river, killing 151 people. The subsequent Board of Inquiry found that the accident was caused by the collapse of the tephra dam holding back nearby Mount Ruapehu's crater lake, creating a large lahar in the Whangaehu River, which destroyed one of the bridge piers at Tangiwai only minutes before the train reached the bridge. The disaster remains New Zealand's worst rail accident.

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Size: 4928px × 3264px
Location: Tangiwai, near Waiouru, central North Island, New Zealand
Photo credit: © Geoff Marshall / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: architecture, bridge, central, construction, disaster, forest, frame, island, landscape, north, rail, railroad, railway, river, sleeper, steel, structure, tangiwai, timber, track, train, transport, transportation, tree, truss, waiouru, whangaehu, wood, zealand