RAILWAY WRECK

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26857, 9 October 1952, Page 9

RAILWAY WRECK

50 Dead Near London (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 12.30 a.m) LONDON, Oct. 8. Three trains were wrecked during the height of the morning rush at Wealdstone station, 11 miles from the heart of London, today. The British railways announced that about 50 passengers were killed and about 100 taken to hospital. The dead were reported to include many servicemen. An express train bound from Perth, Scotland, to London crashed into the rear of a suburban train standing at the station. An express train on the way from London to Manchester crashed into the wreckage. Some passenger carriages were telescoped in the collision. Others were thrown across the platform on which intending passengers were waiting. A railway official described the scene as a battlefield. Two of the three engines were flung broadside across the tracks. At one point three splintered carriages were piled on top of one anotner. Ambulances and doctors rushed to the scene from all the main communities in Middlesex County and from north-west London. Moving vans and other motor vehicles were used to help take the injured to hospitals. Volunteer workers clawed at the wreckage with their bare hands to remove the victims trapped in the broken carriages. Scores of children on their way to school are feared to have been in the local train.

The Manchester express suffered only slight damage. Firmen raced up and down the length of the debris putting out small fires.

A nearby chemist’s shop was turned into a casualty clearing station. Rescuers clambered 50 feet over the wreckage to reach the injured, some of whom were thrown from their seats high into the pile of debris. Several smashed coaches telescoped and rammed into a footbridge across the station platform. The two locomotives pulling the Manchester express crashed across the platform, cutting through the crowds of waiting passengers. A Roman Catholic priest and a Salvation Army officer clambered over the wreckage to give succour to the dying. Doctors gave morphia injections to those seriously injured before they were taken to hospital.