SWISS PRESS INDIGNANT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1910, Page 10

SWISS PRESS INDIGNANT.

— 4 EIGHT SHILLINGS FOR SAVING SIXTY LIVES. During the heavy rains and floods in ■>the Cantons of Geneva and Vaud at the end of last January, a Swiss railway gatekeeper at a level crossing, named Allaman, hearing an unusual hissing sound, walked along the lines, having a presentiment that-theie was something wrong. He found that a stream flowing from the Jura Mountains into Lake Geneva had become a torrent, and overflowing its banks had swept away about 30 yards of the permanent way, leaving the rails suspended in the air. As the Geneva-Lausanne express travelling at sixty miles an hour was due in a few minutes, and would be precipitated into the torrent with its sixty passengers, Allaman ran to his little House for a red flag and stopped the express fifty yards from 1 the suspended rails, and then returned home pleased with the fact that he had prevented a terrible accident. Some days ago, wrote the Chronicle's correspondent on 12th March, the n&ws of the affair [•arrived at the Berne headquarters of 'the Federal Railway Company, and the Swiss managers thought that such an act on the part of a gatekeeper should be rewarded. Alleman received his reward this morning for saving the express and its sixty travellers from destruction. The reward was Bs, which works out at l£d a life. Ihe Swiss press aTe indignant at the ridiculous reward for a great service, and several papers state that if the accident had occurred the Federal Railway Company woftld have been obliged to pay between £8000 and £10,001) damages.