Newspaper Article 2008 – Bay man’s life on locos was one long hoot

Bay man’s life on locos was one long hoot

After 48 years at the control of locomotives, both steam and diesel electric, Napier’s Kevin Tasker is hanging up the gloves. When he agreed to chat to Roger Moroney about his life on the rails, a time of 11am was settled on…and he turned up on the dot.  “I’m an engine driver,” he smiled, as he looked at the clock.

OUR PEOPLE

THE fine old steam engines of the early 1960s were great steam and smoke-belching devices which, like Henry Ford’s famous old Model T, came in any colour… as long as it was black.

But not all the old locomotives were black.

There was one, on the Napier to Woodville run, which became something of an attention-grabber when it arrived at its destination.

For it was a bright and cheerful white.

Kevin Tasker, a veteran of the rails who reckons he’s probably clocked up well over a million miles, laughed when he recalled the day the white loco snorted its way into the station.

“We were steaming through around Takapau.  There was an airstrip for the top-dressing plains [planes] running along by the track and there was a DC3 taking off to do some super spreading.”

With the locomotive in full roar, and belching plumes of smoke, the pilot of the aircraft found himself taking off into a sky filled with sooty clouds.  He was clearly not impressed, as Kevin explained.

“We saw him come around… he lined us up and dropped the whole load of super all over us. We were just white with the stuff.

“You had to laugh.”

They were, he said, the days of “fire, coal and water” and were the true years of rail.

“I really enjoyed those early days on the job working on steam. The smell… the atmosphere… the hot oil, steam and smoke is something else.”

Progress, of course, relegated the steam engines to museums and specialist restoration clubs, and the semaphore, morse code and oil lamps Kevin cut his driving teeth on eventually morphed through the years into today’s sophisticated global positioning satellite systems.

“We used to stop the train sometimes on the way to Gisborne and get off to pick mushrooms. You couldn’t today… the GPS would show you’d stopped and they’d be calling to ask what was wrong,” he said with a smile.

Kevin, who was born and schooled in Hastings, always wanted to be a train driver… simple as that. He had an uncle who joined the railways in 1925, and as a paper boy Kevin would make a special trip down to the rail station to sell papers… knowing the engine drivers would see he was keen on trains and invite him up into the cab to have a look at the controls.

“While I was still at school I used to come over to Napier during the school holidays to the locomotive depot to make sure that my application to join was not mislaid.”

He had, indeed, applied to become a train driver while a mere slip of a lad… and he kept at them.

“It turned into a ritual. The bosses would stand me up against the office wall and mark my height with a government-issue indelible pencil.”

A grave and thoughtful chin-rubbing conversation would then follow as the bosses, hard-bitten but fair men who were returned soldiers, considered the result.

“Too small,” he would be told.

“You’ll have to go home and eat a few more vegetables, my lad.”

But persistence triumphed.

“I think in the end they got sick of me and let me start on the job at 16 instead of the regulation 17.”

Kevin was naturally delighted, although his parents didn’t share his full-steam-ahead enthusiasm.

“They wanted me to stay on at school for another year but I put up a fight.  I was never one to let education get in the way of my career.”

One of his teachers remarked to him before he left school that driving trains was what he should pursue, telling him “because if you pursue algebra I daresay you’ll end up designing a train with square wheels.”

Monday, March 7, 1960, was the day young Kevin Tasker’s heart beat a little faster than usual.

“It was one of those occupations where you start at the very bottom”

He was officially on the books. He was the newest addition to the New Zealand Railways.

“It was one of those occupations where you start at the very bottom and work your way up through the grades… there were no shortcuts to the top.”

Some young blokes baled out after a couple of years through impatience, but Kevin’s career course was on track and he was prepared to do the seven years it took to take the controls.

“The responsibility they give you is daunting,” he said.

“You drive a passenger train with 400 people aboard and you are trying to reach the destination on time… and driving a 1500-tonne express freight train on a wet night has its challenges.”

From day one, he was on a rotating-shift system. It’s part of the deal, and while working nights may not be everyone’s boiler of coal, Kevin loved it.

“I suppose I’m a night owl,” he said with a smile.

“I always enjoyed the shift work, especially the night shifts. Being up and about when everyone else is asleep has always appealed to me,”

There were plenty of fine and fun times, but they were also tempered by the grim, tragic side of the job.

The close calls and the deaths on the rails.

“Three times,” Kevin said quietly when asked if he had been the unfortunate driver of a locomotive chosen by someone to end their life by stepping out onto the rails.

The incidents shook him, but his resolve was firm.

“Unfortunately, it is something that happens. I didn’t lose too much sleep over it because I told myself it was not my fault.  There was nothing I could do, I just felt sadness for the families of those people.”

The near-misses also left him with a racing heart… and they were more regular occurrences than he would have liked.

“People won’t wait for trains. They’ll try and cross.”

Then there were the kids who played chicken, standing on the tracks as the locomotive roared toward them, and leaping aside.

“And street kids in Hastings at midnight… jumping out across the tracks”

Of the number of times he has barrelled into wandering stock, well, he’s lost count.

There have been several derailments, one of the worst being about five years ago when a 700-tonne log train he was driving struck a damaged section of track near Raupunga.

“I was lucky that day, I got over but I looked back and saw the wagons going over.”

On another occasion his heart was derailed… by a young lady called Robyn, who worked in the locomotive clerical office.

“That’s how I met my wife, so yes, joining the railways was a very good decision.”

He has done the Napier to Gisborne and Palmerston North runs since the day he started, and it is understatement of the year material to say he knows pretty well every metre of cold steel rail along those routes.

“Yeah, I know them pretty well now.”

Although progress and the corporate politics of change had altered the course of the job, he never regretted a day of it, working by the philosophy that “every trip is an adventure”.

“It’s the people through the years that I’ll miss.  There were some great characters… great days.”

And while retirement will allow him to time to “finally” clean out his garage, organise his model train sets better (“the house is full of them”) do some travelling with Robyn and get stuck into some community work, he won’t exactly be parked up on a rail siding when it comes to getting a head of steam up.

“Until the company train up another locomotive engineer on steam I’ve been asked to come back and help out on the few occasions during the year the steam trains run”

And with a grin, he recalled the time he was looking after the steam train recently and a little boy approached him after having a close look at the great engine.

The boy was frowning… there was something wrong.

“It hasn’t got a face,” the youngster said, explaining that he always watched Thomas the Tank Engine.

Kevin didn’t have an answer to that one.

Photo captions –

LOOKING BACK: Kevin Tasker ponders 48 years of driving the rails of Hawke’s Bay as he prepares for his last run before retiring last Thursday.
PICTURE: DUNCAN BROWN HBT080537-01

LOOKING FORWARD (INSET): It is 1960, and 16-year-old Kevin Tasker looks forward to a career on the tracks.