RAIL DISASTER IN ENGLAND STRANGELY CAUSED

Grey River Argus, 19 April 1948, Page 5

RAIL DISASTER IN ENGLAND STRANGELY CAUSED

Communication Cord Pulled by Unknown Passenger 23 DEAD AND 34 INJURED

(Rec. 5.30). LONDON, April 17. There are 25 people dead and 34 are injured as the result of a collision between a Glasgow-to-London passenger express train, and a Glasgow-to-London night mail train.

The collision occurred between Winsford Junction and Winsford station, in Cheshire, at mid-night. Seven coaches of the passenger train were wrecked. The passenger train had halted, because the communication cord had been pulled, and the mail train crashed into it. There was only a Post Office sorting crew on the mail train, but the express was packed, mainly with servicemen who were going and returning on leave. Several of the servicemen, including one German prisoner of war, were’ among the casualties. The staff of the express placed fog signals along the line in a frantic, but futile effort to halt the mail train after the guard had spent several minutes in going through the carriages trying to ascertain who had pulled the communication cord. Sixty firemen and Royal Army Medical Corps doctors crawled among twisted steel and splintered woodwork in the eerie beams of ambulance headlights to rescue trapped persons. Those soldiers who were not injured also assisted, while rescuers, with acetylene cutters, cut a way through the wreckage. The rear coach of the express was an unrecognisable mass of wood and metal. The engine of the mail train remained upright after it had ploughed into the passenger train. The train staff escaped injury. If someone had not pulled the communication cord the Cheshire railway crash would not have occurred. Questions are being asked. Did some soldier pull the cord so that he could jump from the train and return to a nearby camp? Was it someone in trouble, or was it just a prank? The police are trying the check one survivor’s story that a man ran from the line with a suitcase a few minutes before the crash. Neither the police nor the railway officials have yet discovered who pulled the cord. The person who did so may be among those who are dead. The police think that the quick transfer of survivors to an Irish mail train proceeding ’to London has hampered their inquiries. They hone that someone among those who are detained in hospital may provide a clue. ’ (Rec. 10.30). LONDON. April 18. _ The death roll in the Cheshire train crash is 23, not 25, as cabled earlier.