Tube disaster clues sought

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33783, 4 March 1975, Page 17

Tube disaster clues sought

(New Zealand Press Association —Copyright)

LONDON, March 3.

Rescuers inching among three-day-old bodies and tangled metal in the wreckage of the Moorgate underground disaster today sighted the body of the train’s driver.

The sighting raised hopes that the body of Leslie Newson, who was at the controls of the commuter train when it slammed into a dead-end tunnel on Friday, would give some clues as to the cause of the disaster.

Rescue parties working a maximum of 20-minute shifts in intense heat, deadly fumes and the stench of death, first clawed their way into the leading carriage late last night. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered, but police say that at least another 13, mostly women, remain in the front carriage, reduced by the 35-mile-an-hour impact from 50 feet to eight feet.

Rescue workers saw Newson’s body in the tiny driver’s cabin, now embedded in the brickwork at the end of the blind tunnel. A doctor with the rescue party said: “I have seen the lower part of the driver’s body. It is intact. I could not see the top half because of the wreckage, but it is possible that his body may be whole.”

Investigators desperately want to know why brakes of the six-carriage train were not applied as it careened through the station and into the tunnel. If Newson’s body is recovered relatively intact it will be easy to establish whether he had a heart attack or lost control through some other abnormality, said the doctor, who did not wish to be identified. The disaster is being studied in the same way as an air crash. Experts are photographing and minutely examining every piece Of wreckage. They intended to photograph what remains of the driving controls when the cabin is reached. A device known as the dead man’s handle could be the key to the crash.

; j The handle, which controls 'the power and emergency jbraking, is depressed by the I driver while the train is runining. The brakes come on when it is released.

i It is possible to disconnect 'the handle, which some drivers say they find uncomfortable to hold down, but subsway officials said that they [did not believe this had happened.

“We are certain that the dead man’s handle had not been neutralised in this way,” a London Transport spokesman said.

More than 80 people were injured in the crash, and three of them were listed in grave condition early today.