TERRIBLE TRAIN WRECK

Evening Star, Issue 22277, 2 March 1936, Page 10

TERRIBLE TRAIN WRECK

33 KILLED, 80 INJURED COLLISION ON RIVER BRIDGE In a Christmas Eve head-on railway crash on a river bridge in Central Germany 33 persons were killed and about 80 injured. The scene of the disaster was just outside the station at Gross Heringen, between Naumburg and Erfurt Thu'tngm. The trams concerned were the Berlin express to Frankfort and Basle, drawn by two engines and running at 60 miles an hour, and a slow local train from Erfurt to Leipzig. To allow the slow train, which was nearly half an hour late, to continue on its way the signals had been set against the express, whose track the local train had to cross. The driver of the first engine of tho express stated that, trying- to make tip a delay of 20 minutes" he overran the signals. As a result the two trains, approaching each other, met on the same track on tho bridge over the river Saale. It was nearly 7 o'clock in the evening, and the darkness added to the horror and confusion. So tremendous was the impact that most of the coaches of the slow train, in which all the deaths and all the serious/casualties occurred, were overturned or smashed to pieces. One of them hung suspended on tho railings of the bridge. Quantities of wreckage were thrown into the river, giving rise to the rumour, since officially denied, that one of the coaches was actually flung into the water. The express train, saved, apparently by its own weight and speed, kept the rails and escaped practically undamaged. Though many of its passengers were thrown violently from their seats and some complained of shock and minor injury, none was seriously hurt. Many of them sprang out and attempted to give help at the mass ot wreckage, from which came terrible cries of terror and agony. There were heartrending scenes immediately after the crash, as the local train was filled with family parties returning from hist-minute shopping, and the track was tilled with parents seeking their children and crying children seeking their parents. Some families were wiped out; many children are left without father or motner. TOYS STREW THE LfNE. The trac'k was strewn with parcels, some of them broken or torn open, revealing dolls and other toys that were being taken home, or delicacies for the traditional Ger-nan family meal late on Christmas Eve. One man, flung through the roof of a carriage, fell on to the ironwork of the bridge. He clung there for 20 minutes. Then, unable to hang on longer owing to the intense cold, he dropped into the river, but was able to swim to the bank. As soon as he recovered he insisted on searching for his wife. After an hour he found her—dead. All the neighbouring villages sent their ambulances and lire brigades to the spot, and as soon as messages got through troops, labour service men, and relief trains arrived from Erfurt, Jena, and Weissenfols. Six women and a six-year-old girl were among tho dead, all of whom vere Germans. The victims, most of them peasants, were covered by friends with pine branches, the German symhol of Christmas. Herr Hitler sent a telegram to the local Nazi chief asking him to convey his deep sympathy to the relatives of the dead and his best wishes to the injured for their recovery.