RAILWAY DISASTER IN SPAIN.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 369, 27 June 1884, Page 5

RAILWAY DISASTER IN SPAIN.

OVER FIFTY LIVES LOST

A horrible railway disaster toolj: place near Oiudad Real on April 26; The scene of the accident wag ajk kilometre 279 on the line to Portugal^ the Oiudad Eeal and Badajoz Railway;;, between the stations of Almadanejos and Chillpn, a lew miles from the A\maden Quicksilver Mines. The Railway comes down » rapid incline and round a sharp curve to the bridge supported on three columns, which carries the line eight metres above a small stream, which was unusually swollen by several weeks rain. The train was a slow one, travelling at the rate of thirty kilometres an hour, and j at four o'clock in the morning the engine, the tender, four luggage vans, and four third-class carriages broke through the bridge and fell into the ■water, together with the debris of the bridge. Four other carriages and the rear luggage brake van remained hanging over the side of the incline down which th.c Jtrain had come. The survivors of the passengers and the railway officials describe the scene as terrible. All who could work did their best until relief came from the. nearest station, five milesofiE. Strangely enough this slow train, which seldom takes many passengers on Saturday, embarked , eighty time-expired sol;---diers at Badajoz. Fifty-six wounded passengers and fifty-nine dead bodies have been extracted from the wrecked . carriages; but the officer in charge of' the soldiers says about thirty are stiil missing, whose bodies may be in thte river, or may. ha,ve : , ; been swept off by the current. An examination has letl. to the strong belief that the bridge hatf been deliberately weakened, and thnit tw,o of the three supports had been cu;t through. The :; telegraph posts haj, been cut down for a distance cf. twenty-six miles in both directions from the bridge, and the wires severec . The intelligence of this extraordinary event caused a great sensation in the ■capital, and iri,tense v indignation is expressed by the papers of every shade of

politics, which , call , for ; the severi punishment of ( . tjie , authors of such i barbarous outrage/ i