THE ACCIDENT ON THE WELLINGTON FEATHERSTON RAILWAY.

Evening Post, Volume XVII, Issue 321, 16 January 1879, Page 2

THE ACCIDENT ON THE WELLINGTON- FEATHERSTON RAILWAY.

__? FURTHER PARTICULARS. In our last evening's issue we described at some length an accident which occurred on the Wellington and Featherston Railway on Tuesday evening. From further particulars supplied to us to-day by a gentleman who was a passenger by the train which met with the mishap, we find that the escape from utter destruction was narrower even than we had been led to believe. The train, which consisted of an Avonslde engine, weighing 17 tons, and about a dozen vehicles, including six or seven heavily-laden timber waggons, was proceeding (as we stated yesterday) down a steep gradient and round a curve when the collision took place. The driver, therefore, was unable to see any great distance ahead, owing to the curve, and was unable to stop very quickly, from the sharpness of tho incline. Just at the point where the accident happened, tbe line is cut in the side of a lofty and precipitous wooded hill, which on the one hand towers aloft to a height of several hundred feet, and on the other descends below the line to a depth of 20 or 30 feet. A large pine tree on tbe heights above — not merely a branch, as we were informed yesterday — was torn up by the roots during the violent gale, and fell directly across the rails. Two circumstances were very fortunate, first that the falling tree, the trunk of which was nearly three feet in diameter, did not happen to drop on the train itself; secoad, that it lay at right angles to the line, and was of such large diameter, for had it fallen diagonally across or been of smaller size, the train almost inevitably must have been thrown off the rails and precipitated down the embankment, when melancholy loss of life must have occurred. As it wa«, the engine, which was running with the trailing end foremost, after the first shock actually drove the whole tree in front of it for 40 or 50 yards, before the train i cpuld b3 brought to a total standstill. By this time the branches of the tree had become "mixed up" with the working parts of the engine, and not a single axe could be obtained, none being carried by the train; thus although all hands turned-to with a will it took nearly an hour, with the assistance of the screw-jacks, to get the engine and line clear. It is evident that two or three ax«s ought always to be carried by trains which have to pass under wooded hills, and also that a careful inspection of the line should be made before the passing of each train, especially on windy days, when trees or branches are likely to be blown across.