KILLED IN COLLISION.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 24, 28 January 1921, Page 5

KILLED IN COLLISION.

WELSH TRAIN DISASTER. SIXTEEN LOSE THEIR LIVES. i EXPRESS CRASHES INTO SLOW! TRAIN. (By Cable.--rress Association.- Copy-rir*-*.) j ; LONDON, January 27. ; Sixteen people were killed and sixteen i injured itwo critically) in a collision be- . f.veen a slow passenger train and an I express train, which met in a head-on : collision at Abermule, 3*j miles south- ' west of Montgomery, in Wales. The scene oi the disaster is a lonely ; spot in the Welsh hills. The railway is | a single track worked on the block tablet : system. It is not known why the slow : train left Abcnuule, instead of waiting ' for the express as usual. The trains met I within a hundred yards of a bend in the ; line which obscured the view of both I drivers. The fireman and driver of the : express whistled, put on the brakes, and I jumped from the footplates almost at ' the moment of the collision, being only i slightly injured. Tlie driver and fireman of the slow train were killed. Xobody | else in the slow train was seriously hurt, j The deaths were practically confined to the second and third coaches of the exI press, which were telescoped. The first I and fourth coaches and the engine of the slow train stood upon the debris of the , express, which was piled up to the height of 20ft. From the wreckage beneath the engine came muffled cries and moans. Other passengers were quii— iv at work extri- ! eating the injured and dead. It took ! five hours to extricate some of the pa«- ---| sengers. railway officials having to break > through the wreckage with axes. One man had got out at the previous station to buy a newspaper, and. being unable to reach his own carriage, where his wife was travelling, jumped into a rear car- | nacre. In the collision he was unhurt, ihut his wife was killed. The poor fellow I darted around the wreckage in a de- | mented state, crying, ''My wife! She's in there'"' Among the killed were I/ord Herbert Vane-Tern nest, n director of the railway on which the collision occurred, and two i boys, sons of Mr. A. L. Onslow and j nephews of the late Earl Onslow, for- | merly Governor of New Zealand, who ; ! were proceeding to TTarrow School, -i'A. . land N.Z. fable.)