KiwiRail trains and Interislander ferries will take part in WW100's Roaring Chorus on November 11 to mark the Armistice Centenary.
“Our trains and Interislander ferries will be sounding their horns at 11.02am on Sunday November 11, joining the rest of New Zealand in creating a ‘roaring chorus’ to mark the end of two minutes silence,” says KiwiRail Acting Chief Executive Todd Moyle.
“KiwiRail is intensely aware of the impact that terrible war had on New Zealand.
“At the start of World War One, rail had over 20,000 employees and over 40 percent of them gave up service to go and defend this country.
“At least 450 of them never came home.
“A hundred years on, we can only imagine the joy and relief that Kiwis must have felt when they heard the war was over.”
At the announcement of the armistice, The Evening Post reported that in Wellington there were ‘songs and cheers, miscellaneous pipings and blastings, and tootings and rattlings—a roaring chorus of gladsome sounds’.
In Otago, it was reported that ‘all the steam whistles and church bells in the district were going, and each railway engine in passing added its quote to the general rejoicing’.
“Sounding the horns of our trains and ferries, as happened then, is a reminder of that joy, but also of the sacrifices that were made,” Mr Moyle says.