SOME TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2788, 11 October 1910, Page 7

SOME TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

i Literally staggering in their dra- ; matic features as well as in their actual results have some railway accidents been. If the reader were told that in ons memorable collision preparations were actually made by the railway officials to succour the injured an appreciable portion of time before the accident occurred, he might be excused for feeling sceptical. Yet this was indeed the case. It was foreseen by the agitated officials that though the dread collision had yet to take place nothing but the most marvellous good luck could prevent it, and, unfortunately, that possibility did not intervene. This truly record smash occurred as far back as 1874, and, happily, with the vast improvement made in railway appliances since then, such another one could hardly happen now. A short distance out of Norwich | the railway line for a few miles used | to be a "single" one, and, of course, | only one train was allowed on this stretch at a time. The mail-train left Great Yarmouth for Norwich as usual one day, and she reached , Brundall—where the line became ' single—just as an express from Nor- ; wich entered the single track at the other end. A fatal and mistaken order almost at the same instant allowed the mail train to proceed, ' and thus two trains were rushing along at an ever-increasing speed to a deadly embrace, if they could not be stopped in time. But the officials .were utterly powerless, and the only i hope was that one train might round the cur\ % which marked the centre lof the single track, sufficiently in j front of the other to avert the awful ' danger menacing both. If ever there ! was a hideous trial of strength be- ! tween locomotives in prospect here !it was. Both trains were soon ! travelling at nearly forty miles an { hour—the mail train made up of 13 i carriages, the express of 14, and the I latter's engine weighing 45 tons to I the former's 40—and everything i pointed to a terrible encounter in or 1 near the curve. In short, an un- ! paralleled smash was promised if something unlooked for did not intervene ; and though the dreadful mistake was known in Norwich almost immediately it was made, nothing could be done but to dispatch doctors and ambulances post : haste down the line. The doomed trains met almost precisely midway, 1 and ere speed could be nrich reduced | there was a crash so deafening as to Ibe heard miles away. All four ! drivers and firemen were instantly ' launched into eternity, and the dead | and dying strewn about in all directions, and such a scene of wreckage and of torn and twisted metal has rarely been known on a railway : track.

Only a couple of years later a snowstorm was indirectly responsible for one of the most harrowing accidents in the history of British railways, no less than three trains being involved. It occurred on the Great Northern Railway, six miles from Huntingdon. The disaster, or rather the first stage of it, was due to the Scotch express dashing into the rear of a coal train. A scene of death and destruction was the natural outcome of so fearful an impact

but to increase the horror of the situation tenfold, just as strenuois efforts were being made to rescue the injured, the Leeds express, which had passed through Huntingdon without receiving any warning of danger, dashed through the blinding snow into the already wrecked train with a sickening crash. Small wonder that th 3 valiant rescuers were for a time paralysed :iy the nwful horror of tin'-; second oaf.At trophe.

One of the most dramatic, if not fatal, railway disasters which ever happened in America wan tlut at Boston in ISB7. A train consisting of some nine coaches, fairy well filled with passengers, was proeeeding along a lofty bridge spanning a Boston street, when the lriver, en gaining tho embankment, happened to turn round and, to his unspeakable horror, the bridge was no longer there. It had completely vanished, taking with it four of the carriages, and the roar of the falling masonry which reached his ears the next instant told where it had gone. In at least one of the carriages every occupant was found dead, l.ut another, fortunately, fell in such a way that only one of the passengers was killed.

Many readers will recall the accident to the Roumanian ixpress, for probably, not even in America, has there been anything to surpass the indescribable horror of the thing. The express was proceeding down a steep gradient, and behind it, some distance away, was a heavily-laden oil train, which had been shunted into a siding to allow of the passenger train passing. The weight of the oil train was such that a little way dowi) the declivity it overpowered its engine, and the fact was signalled to the guard of the express in front. But by cruel fortune the signal was misunderstood, and the express, in stead of increasing speed was stopped at the foot of the hill, and ere it could be started again the horrible tragedy was being enacted. There was a tremendous crash, a veritable torrent of oil from the wrecked goods train poured over the doomed express, and then, harrowing to relate, was a fire.—"Weekly Telegraph."