SAVED HIS TRAIN

Evening Post, Issue 26, 31 January 1935, Page 12

SAVED HIS TRAIN

BADLY SCALDED DRIVER

THE COMET EXPRESS

(From "The Port*" Representative.) LONDON, January 5.

As the famous Comet oxprcss, consisting of fifteen crowded coaches, was travelling from Euston to Manchester on the last day of the year, a valve blew out and scalding water and steam poured out and filled the driver 'a cabin. Tho driver,' Samuel Linley, ana his flrcman, Frank, Wood, made a gallant and successful fight to sav'o their train and the 700 passengers who wore on board. The train was travelling at 55 miles an hour when the accident occurred. For more than three miles' these two men clung with scalded hands to the cabin rail while they stood on the narrow steps leading off the footplate of the fireman's side of tho engine. Blinded by steam, which obscured all his controls, and scalded by the gush of boiling water, Linley had twice made ineffective attempts to stop the train by closing the 'steam regulator.' Each timo he was driven back to tho stops. Some miles' from the Welton signal^ box he made a further desperate and successful attempt to save the train. Regaining the steams-clouded footplate, he forced his way back to his side of the cabin,-'and groping among'the controls, ' blindly clutched at tho vacuum brake. • ■• ' . ' Ho hastily swung it overhand flung himself back to tho safety of the steps and clung thero in great pain until the train came to a standstill a quarter of a mile further on. Then, having assumed tho safety of passengers, he dropped to tho ground. Tho skin was scalded from Ms hand and forearm. " His first thought was for the protection of his train. He sent Wood tp warn-tho signalman at Welton box, while the guard ran 500 yards back along tho lino to Jay fog-signals to warn oncoming traffic. Having seen tho damaged cngino taken into a siding, Linloy was convoyed in an ambulance to tho Bugby Hospital for treatment. Wood, who had a scalded wrist, was given first-aid treatment at Wolton.