BIG TRAIN SMASH

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 80, 2 October 1945, Page 7

BIG TRAIN SMASH

THIRTY-NINE, KILLED

NIGHT SEARCH FOR VICTIMS (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 9 a.m. LONDON, October 1. The death-roll in the train smash between Boxmoor and Tring is now 39, including 37 passengers, the driver and fireman. This morning rescue workers were still digging into the vast mass of twisted steel and shattered woodwork of the wrecked Scottish express, trying to reach a coach in which an unknown number of people are buried.

Railway workers and American army personnel from a nearby airfield, and firemen and police worked, ceaselessly all night. Powerful cranes tore aside the debris or lifted aside wreckage, but a great mass remains to be shifted before the buried coach can be reached.

Three more of the injured have died in hospital. The Press Association says it is still too early to estimate the final deathroll. Morning mist is hanging over the scene, which is stated to be similar to that which prevailed when the smash occurred.

Pathetic evidences of the identity of passengers, such as shoes, scarves, an occasional suitcase, and a soldier's mess-tin, are being recovered from time to time, taken by the police, listed, and set aside for identification. .

The officers in charge of the rescue squads anticipate working through another night. They will not give up until everybody is recovered,: but the hope of finding anybody alive has been, abandoned. -'

■ The, fast up and down lines have been cleared for traffic, but there it still obstruction on the slow'lines.

Among the killed was Ernest Hill, aged 30, an attendant on the Royal train, who was returning after serving their Majesties on their tour of Scotland. He was decorated by the King this year with the Silver Medal of the Royal Victorian Order for personal services. .