While due to excessive speed, the accident resulted in overdue improvements by New Zealand Railways to signalling and braking.

Two excursion trains carrying about 3000 workers and families from the Islington Freezing Works (abattoir) in Christchurch had been to Ashburton for their annual picnic.

Carter was then acquitted of manslaughter in the Christchurch Supreme Court, but was dismissed after a Royal Commission of Inquiry found he was negligent in not observing the regulations governing an approach to a station.

But he was "scapegoat for a railway system suffering from severe growing pains, using operational methods that had not kept pace with increased traffic" (Conly & Stewart, page 77).

While improvements were on the way (and the first signals engineer (H. J. Wynne) was appointed in 1900), the accident contributed to the remarkably rapid expansion of Tyer's block (tablet) working from 1901.