The train had started, and run a score of yards or so, and was just gathering way, when the passengers were startled by the train being brought to a very sudden standstill.
A belated passenger - male, of course - with both arms full of parcels, had appeared on the platform just after the train started, stumbled across it, and, in spite of warning cries, was evidently going to try to board the moving train without even - encumbered as he was - attempting to catch hold of one of the stanchions, when the driver stopped the train so suddenly.
The man was within a foot or two of the train, and his sudden rush caused one of his parcels, just as the train stopped, to fly out of his arms and roll under the train.
The man coolly went to get it, and either fell or voluntarily got down between the platform and the now stationary train.
He had to be assisted out, and to new arrivals on the platform it seemed that a man who had been run over was being pulled out from under the train.
The man got out with some little trouble, and staggered across the platform, with the signs of a big bruise on his forehead.
If the driver had not been keeping watch, or had "waited to see what would happen," the would-be passenger would probably have been a dead man.
It was the same driver who pulled the express up in time to save an accident when an obstruction was laid across the line near Waiwera some time ago.
• The thick fog and heavy mist which has prevailed along the coast since Saturday delayed the Moana, for Melbourne,via Bluff and Hobart, which left the cross wharf at Dunedin on Sunday at 2pm.
She got only as far as the cross channel at the Heads, and there came to anchor, the fog and mist being too dense for her to proceed with safety.
A few hours later, when the mist lifted and allowed a glimpse to be obtained of the heads light, an effort was then made to get out, but the fog and mist came down again like a pall, and the Moana was compelled to remain up to 5pm yesterday, when she got away. - ODT, 31.8.1909.
