REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 260, 1 October 1936, Page 10

REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

DERAILMENT OF ENGINE. PASSENGERS’ GOOD FORTUNE. Per Press Association. DUNEDIN, Oct. 1. A temporary deviation of the broken main railway line at Evansdale was completed at 11 o’clock last night, the normal service being resumed this morning. The escape of the passengers and crew in the derailment was almost as miraculous as in the recent Main Trunk mishap. The first carriage, a secondclass was packed with passengers, including six women, and had it been telescoped heavy casualties would have been inevitable. The express was running down the long incline from Warrington at 25 miles an hour when the driver heard the rattle of loose ballast and lightly applied the brakes. Then the train crossed a plank bridge over the Evansdale Greek and, though the bogey wheels were off the rails, the noise censed. Had there been sleepers on the bridge the train would probably have toppled into the creek. Comine’ to the Evansdale station it. a clay cutting the derailed bogeys struck the points, causing the engine to leave the line. It ploughed its way along the clav for 60 yards, cutting a trench 9ft wide and 3ft deep before capsizing against the hank. Vi hen it toppled, the couplings broke, which caused the full application of the Westinghouse brakes, bringing the train to a standstill with a jar. The front wheels of the leading carriage left the line, hut it remained upright, the passengers experiencing no more than a jolt. The driver, H. Stile, the fireman, E. Ward, and the road foreman, W. J. Connelly, who were in tho cab, were flung violently across the cab, hut sustained no injury. There were 125 passengers, who were brought to Dunedin by five railway buses, which left the scene of the mishap within an ‘hour of the occurrence. An earlier message appears on page U.