Trains Lost In Drifts

Northern Advocate, 7 March 1947, Page 5

Trains Lost In Drifts

None of the night trains from Scotland and the North arrived in London this morning. Railway companies could only report that they were stuck in snowdrifts “somewhere.” The Manchester-London train arrived 15 hours late. A woman was found dead in a ear covered with eight feet of snow near Aberystwyth. Two of the principal milk-distribut-ing companies in the London area have decided to cut supplies by 20 per cent because of transport difficulties. The United Dairies, serving 3.000,000 London families, stated that it was doubtful whether there would be milk available tomorrow beyond the requirements of priority consumers. The company had received only half of its normal supplies. The Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society, serving south-east London, will attempt to meet priority needs and cut non-priority consumers by 50 per cent. The blizzard caused the worst storms in memory and cut off villages and hamlets in a belt from South Wales to Bedfordshire. Wind at 60 miles an hour blew down telegraph poles and piled up impassable snowdrifts, paralysing road traffic. Rescuers are fighting their way to is<?lated villages in the storm-lashed Cotswolds, where some areas have no contact with the outside world.

Gale warnings cover the whole area south of a line from the Humber to Anglesey, also the western part of the English Channel ,the southern area of the Irish Sea, Dover and the Thames, and extend across the North Sea to Heligoland. Rain which turned to ice on the roads and railways in London has caused transport disorganisation which experts describe as the worst for 30 years. . Ice on the roads sent vehicles in:o skids and in places halted cars, lorries and buses. Five hundred vehicles are stranded between Cheltenham and Burford. a distance of about 20 miles, and 300 more are stranded between Cheltenr ham and Cirencester, a distance of about 15 miles. Passengers in two trains cut off by snowdrifts in Wales are preparing to spend a second night on the railway. A third train, trapped yesterday, is not expected to be freed until today. It has snowed continuously for 18 hours in the Welsh highlands, where there are drifts 9ft deep on the mountain roads. The snow has half-buried small cottages in isolated hamlets. Heavy losses of cattle and sheep are feared, and farmers estimate a drop of more than 60 per cent in lambing. An automobile association official said it is almost impossible to travel from the south of England to the north.