TRAIN SMASH

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 17 June 1935, Page 5

TRAIN SMASH

15 KILLED; 40 INJURED Expresses Collide at Seventy Miles an Hour HEROIC RESCUE EFFORTS CARRIAGES TELESCOPED (United Prem AaacclAtlon—By EJectria Telegraph Copyright). Received 10.30 a.m. to-day. LONDON, June 16.

Fifteen people were killed and 40 others injured when an express train front King’s Cross, laden chiefly with Simday newspapers, crashed into the duplicated portion of a Newcastle-bound express, which was standing in Welwyn garden city station, just before midnight last night. It was the worst smash in the history of the London-North Eastern Railway. The parcels express carried few passengers and was travelling at 70 miles an hour at the time of the collision, while the Newcastle express was carrying 200 excursionists, the majority of whom were women.

The first arrivals saw a ghastly scene of eight overturned, telescoped carriages, fiom which the moans and screams of the victims arose in the darkness.

HOSPITAL OVERFLOWING. People in the district heard a noise like an explosion and rushed in. cars and on bicycles to the scene, where they took up the work of extricating the passengers. The utmost difficulty was met, as some time elapsed before even a few flares were available. The Welwyn hospital, which has only eight beds, was soon overflowing with injured passengers. Others were taken to Hertford.

Under the light of flares and acetylent lamps the rescuers hacked and tugged at the debris, amidst which it seemed impossible tbat anyone could be alive. Yet a little girl and men and women were extricated by superhuman effort.

Passengers who were lucky to escape with bruises turned immediately to help their less fortunate companions. Nurses presented a strange spectacle in their mud-bespattered uniforms, heavy rain having fallen. Toiling through a heavy thunderstorm, a breakdown gang cleared the line at Welwyn by 4 p.m.

HEROIC NURSE. Nurse Violet Miles, aged 22, after an escape from death through leaving a compartment where her neighbours wanted to sleep, worked throughout the night tending the wounded, after which she collapsed and was taken to a restaurant and revived. She is acclaimed as a heroine. ’She lost her money in the wreckage. A man who was uninjured became demented when he found his wife and daughter dead.

Many women rushed from their homes to render aid and fainted when they saw the appalling scene. An injured woman who was taken to hospital cried, “Where’s baby? A nurse and' a policeman hurried to the wreckage and found the baby dead. The majority of the victims were women.

W. Powell, the Welsh international footballer, was. a passenger on the Newcastle express, and, despite an injury, worked for hours in rescuing others. Firemen using blowlamps extricated the last victim, at 5 a.m.

The driver of the parcels train said he was travelling fast when lie saw the Newcastle train ahead and jammed on the brakes. He watelied the crash coming and then jumped. The guard of the leading train was killed outright.