SOVIET TRAIN WRECK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 207, 2 September 1936, Page 15

SOVIET TRAIN WRECK.

DUE TO CHILD'S PRANK. TRIAL OF OFFICIALS. MOSCOW. How an eight-year-old girl named Pomalova unwittingly caused one of the greatest train wreekk in recent years in the Soviet Union —which killed 51 and injured 52 passengers—was told at the trial in Chita of railroad officials accused of ncgligence. A local passenger train was mounting a grade to a fiagstop point at Tarski a few miles beyond the station of Karvmskaya, in Eastern Siberia, when the Pomalova child turned a handbrake and brought the train tp a standstill. The heavy train failed to start again, but meanwhile the official in charge at Karvmskaya directed an on thp same tracks without asking whether the first train had passed Tarski, where the line branched.

Some passengers from that train got down and saw the express coming about a mile away on apparently the sain o tracks, and shoutei! to their Conductor, who replied calmly, "Oh, no, this track is ours." A' minute or two later the express crashed into the four rear car* and reducod them to matchwood.

The newspaper "Pravda" does -not state, whether the child was killed, but the charges .against the officials also involve drunkenness and frequent breaches of discipline.'