The Tangiwai disaster has been explored in several books, including Geoff Conly and Graham Stewart’s Tragedy on the track. Its cover featured this dramatic painting by the Australian artist Phil Belbin, which originally appeared on a Reader’s Digest cover. The image is probably inaccurate: evidence suggests that the tracks were still in place when the train reached the damaged bridge, which then collapsed under the weight of the locomotive.
The tragedy has also inspired at least three publications aimed at children or young adults, folk songs such as John Archer’s ‘Pillows of the dead’, a handful of novels including Anne Marie Nicholson’s romantic thriller Weeping waters (2006), plays, and several television documentaries and dramas, including The truth about Tangiwai (2002) and Tangiwai: a love story (2011).
Geoff Conly and Graham Stewart, Tragedy on the track, Grantham House, Wellington, 1986
