Night Express Crashes In U.K.

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31982, 8 May 1969, Page 15

Night Express Crashes In U.K.

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MORPETH, May 7.

The London-to-Aberdeen night express was derailed at Morpeth in the early hours of this morning. Seven passengers were killed and more than 100 were injured.

The police gave this toll before dawn, while rescuers worked under arc lamps to free people still trapped in the twisted wreckage of the train.

The express jumped the rails at Morpeth station, in Northumberland, as it thundered towards the Scottish border. The derailed coaches were

strewn along more than 400 yards of the tracks. Thirty ambulances ran a shuttle service to hospitals in Newcastle and Ashington. Firemen freed many of the injured with lifting and cutting equipment. A sleeping-car attendant, Mr Kenneth Ward, said: “Eleven people were sleeping in my compartment. All we knew was a severe shaking, and we were thrown from one end to the other.” On April 8, a Wolverhamp-ton-Coventry express crashed into the rear of a goods train at Coseley, and the two drivers were killed. On January 4, a London-Ramsgate express hit the back of a parcels train near Marden, in Kent, and four people were killed. Britain’s last major railway disaster was on January 6, 1968, when a ManchesterEuston express smashed at high speed into a 60-ton transporter carrying a huge transformer over a Continentaltype automatic level-crossing at Hixon, in Staffordshire. Eleven people were killed and 40 injured.