RAILWAY SMASH THE N.S.W. TRAGEDY DISTRESSING MIDNIGHT SCENES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 72, 26 March 1914, Page 2

RAILWAY SMASH THE N.S.W. TRAGEDY DISTRESSING MIDNIGHT SCENES

! Sydney files, which have come to hand by this week's mail, give full details of the railway smash which occurred at. Exeter Station, New South Wales, on the night of the 13th inst. The disaster was the biggest ever experienced in the history of New South Wales, resulting in fourteen persons being killed and many injured. The accident happened at 11.40 p.m., or just on midnight, when the Temora mail train, crowded with>passengfire, crashed into a standing cattle train at the station. The two middle carriages of the mail were telescoped. The collision occurred in a heavy fog, which is supposed to have so obscured the signals that the driver of the mail was unaware of the presence of the other train until he was within fifty yards of the engine. The two trains met head on with a terrific crash, almost under, the signal arm. Heartrending scenes followed the collision. The .noise of the collision and the screams of the injured attracted all those in the neighbourhood to the spot, and, with the aid of lanterns and hastilykindled bonfires from the splinters of the wrecked railway carriages, everything was done- to extricate the victims from the debris as speedily as possible. SHOCKING FUNERAL TRAGEDY. One of the most dreadful incidents of the disaster was the fatality ( which fell upon the well-known Pitts and Heaver family, of Colorado Station, Wallendbeen. The wrecked train carried the body of Mrs. John Heaver, who died in Sydney. It was being taken to Cootamundra for interment. On the train were also Mr. John Heaver, the Misses Alice, Viola, and Lilian Heaver, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Heaver, and the latter' s sister, Mrs. Pitts. The party, travelling with the mortuary car had engaged a special compartment. Mr. John Heaver and Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Heaver were sitting with their backs to the engine, and the three girls side by side facing it. When the accident happened the three girls were hurled upwards. Viola was thrown into the rack and lay pinned against the roof. Men began to chop with axes just over her head, and she thought every moment an axe would split her skull. She could not make them hear her voice. Lilian was found with the hatrack twisted round her legs, which were so badly bruised it was at first thought one was broken. Alice spoke only a few words to reassure her sister, and died after a few moments in her arms. The three who had their backs to the engine were carried down between the carriages. Mr. Heaver was killed outright, and his body not extricated until some /hours later. Arthur Heaver and his wife were pinned between the two carriages. Both he and she were badly injured, and Mrs.' Heaver, in fact, died shortly afterwards. While they weoa in this terrible position Arthur Heaver saw a man steal a purse containing 14 sovereigns from the hand of his dead sister ; he could not stir to reach the thief. When extricated, Arthur Heaver was taken to the hospital, while the elder of the two girls chose to take her sister back to the Terraces for medical attention. They brought down the body of their sister Alice with them, refusing to be parted from her, and she was in the same sleeping-berth with Lilian, To add to the tragedy, a woman died in the' carriage on the way down. THE HAND OF FATE. "It was the hand of Fate, sure enough," remarked the fireman of the special traih which conveyed Mr. Hodgson to and 'from Exeter. "When the smash occurred two people sitting on one seat in a compartment of one of the wrecked carriages were killed, while the others, sitting directly opposite, escaped with a scratch. Mr. Topham, an ex-engine-driver, and his wife, were occupying the lucky seat in the compartment, and they were unhurt except for a slight cut which Mr. Topham received on the face. On the opposite seat were Mr. and Mrs. Winnis, who were killed. The escape of the other two was simply miraculous." "LOVE, I CAN'T HELP YOU!" Mr. Waugh recited a pathetic incident of a father, mother, and three children, who were imprisoned in the debris. The little boy was crying, "Mother, mother, take me out ! I will be killed !" and his mother answered in a feeble voice, "Love, I can't help you! I'm pinned down myself. You must wait, and the men -will pull you out." The little girl and baby were both crying. "Give me a drink!" the little boy asked, and the mother Replied, "Love, I can't. The men will give you a drink." Mr. Waugh subsequently learned that both parents were among the killed, while the children escaped without a scratch. OTHER INCIDENTS. One man lay - pinned beneath heavy timbers in such a position that be could move no portion of his body save his right hand, which projected from the carriage. This he waved feebly, and when the rescuers came with lifting jacks he told them in a voice ever growing fainter what to do and how to do it. The last timbers had scarcely been lifted from him when he lapsed into unconsciousness, never to recover. " I go through the Balkan war, fight many times, and take a lot of chances. I come out all right ; but I am only in this country two or three days, and I am nearly killed.'* 1 Peter Cassimatis, a good looking foreigner, who lay restlessly in a bed in a ward of the Berrima District Cottage Hospital at Bowral, thus confided his troubles to a reporter. "How I managed to escape with my slight injuries— for I only had my knee hurt, besides receiving a few bruises to the head — I cannot tell you, it was all so quick." One <Jf the victims, Mrs. Clark, died in great agony. Her last words were of her family. "At Newcastle they live," she told the attentive doctor, and expired. Another- woman was only rescued after a ganger had chopped' a doorway away with a hatchet. She had a miraculous escape. When found she was sitting upright in a second-class compartment, unable to move for the pressure of splintered timber, but was released with scarcely a scratch. Her mother was lifted out dead from the wreckage at her feet. The harrowing nature of the rescue work was further heightened by the fact that a bullock broke out of one of the trucks and went mad, charging everything, including the motor carrying the Sun representative. Long before 2 o'clock the injured were on their way to the Berrima District Cottage Hospital .at Bowral. The dead were removed to the railway goods shed, and at dawn there was nothing to be seen but the wreck itself, and the hundred or so who had carried '•out the work of rescue, standing, gloomily reflecting on the horrors they had witnessed.

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