Rail-car In Spectacular Smash With Trailer

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30045, 1 February 1963, Page 8

Rail-car In Spectacular Smash With Trailer

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, January 31.

A guard was injured, a rail-car had to be towed away, a car in a garage 35 yards away was a total wreck, and a heavy truck trailer was smashed in a

spectacular level crossing crash at Stratford today. Two children standing with their bicycles at the side of the truck had remarkable escapes from injury; so did the truck driver and his passenger. J 4 The smash occurred at the Seyton street level crossing, about a mile north of the Stratford station, at 5.20 p.m. The rad'l-car, which had no passengers, struck the link between a truck and ■ the bulk fertiliser trailer it was towing. The impact tossed the two-ton trailer 20ft into the wir and the truck slewed across the street. The front axle and wheels of the trailer hurtled 35 yards, crashed through the

wM of a garage and completely wrecked toe back of a oar inside. The oar is oocisidered by its owner to be • “write off.”

The guard, Mr E E. Mercer, of New Plymouth, who was thought to be standing at the front of the rail-car, suffered a broken right arm and concussion. He was admitted to tlie Stratford Hospital, where his condition was later described as satisfactory. The driver of the rail-car, Mt K. Morris, also of New Plymouth, suffered minor cuts about his face and a hand from the blast of shattered glass in his cabin. The rail-car’s front window and four of its tide windows were shattered; it’s righthand front corner was stove in, and front assembly damaged. It had to be towed away by a steam locomotive