SMASH AT CROSSING

Hawera Star, Volume L, 24 October 1930, Page 4

SMASH AT CROSSING

LORRY STRUCK BY TRAIN.'

DRIVER’S REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

A marvellous escape from possible serious, if not fatal, injury vas experienced by Mr William Craig, of ilawera, at eleven o’clock this morning when the motor delivery lorry lie driving was struck on the Tawhiti Road level crossing by an incoming passenger train from the south. Though the lorry was hurled some 13 yards and damaged considerably before crashing on its side clear of the train track the driver was able to crawl unaided from the wreckage of the cab with no apparent injury other than shock and a cut across the bridge of the nose. Mr Greig, who is employed by the Hawera Brewery Company, Ltd., was driving on to the crossing h the direction of Nolantown. A stiff wind was blowing from the west and he did not hear the approach of the train, being unaware ot the pending danger until the engine was practically on top of him, though the usual whistle signal

nad been sounded from the engine in charge of Driver S. Bennett, and had been distinctly heard by the guard, Mr G. L. Francis, at the rear of the train. Apparently the lorry was almost over the line when the impact occurred and it appears that the rear portion of the lorry was struck by the engine cow-"' catcher, swinging the lorry round to crash against the side of the engine and then be burled across the cattle stop in the same direction as the train till the lorry toppled on its side with a wrecked real* wheel and badly damaged cab, from which the driver emerged through the shattered windscreen The train 1 , which had been slowing up prepatory to entering the station, was 'Stopped in less than its own, length, the guard’s van being still- on the southern portion of the 'crossing when it finallv earn© to rest.

A dent on the right 'hand cylinder guard -over the front wheels of the engine and a broken pipe of the Westinghousc brake system on the aright rear ,oif the engine bore mute evidence of the crash, while the front of the engine and the area round the lorry was liberally strewn with broken glass from a number of bottles- carried on -the lorry and its wrecked windscreen. Damage was also caused' to planks of the cattle stop and the guard rail.