RAILWAY MISHAP

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1923, Page 6

RAILWAY MISHAP

A TRAIN DERAILED. (Per Press Association, i PALMERSTON NORTH, June 22. A Napier mixed train, due at Palmerston north at 8 o’clock, was derailed at 7.30 this evening two miles from Whakaronga, about six miles from Palmerston North. The accident was due to the engine running into a slip, caused by a fall in a steep cutting. The driver saw a light on the line, shown by a resident wishing to warn the approaching train, and put on the brakes. Nevertheless, the engine drove through the slip and left the rails, stopping as the front wheels were on the first sleepers of a narrow bridge with a 50-foot drop below. Nobody was hurt out of forty passengers who were all motored to Palmerston North. It is expected that the line will be clear at 3 o'clock in the morning. The site is near that of a similar accident to a race train last year. COLLISION WITH CAR. INVERCARGILL, June 22. A miraculous escape from death occurred when a motor-car crashed into the Invercargill-Tuatapere train at Wallacetown this afternoon. The driver of the car, on seeing the train, swerved in the same direction as the train was going, and this probably saved his life. The train tossed the car off the line, smashing it hopelessly, but the driver was only slightly bruised. The locomotive was too badly smashed to proceed.