RAKAIA RAILWAY COLLISION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 16 April 1907, Page 1

RAKAIA RAILWAY COLLISION.

A NARROW ESCAPE.

The "Lytteltoh Times" account of the collision at Rakaia station states :— The driver and fireman on each train saw that a collision was inevitable when the engines ware some chains apart, and both appeared to have applied the brakes. The fireman on the Christchurch train then jumped, and as aresult sustained a nasty cut on the head. Tho troop train was travelling at a speed variously estimated at from ten to twenty miles an hour. The engines lifted with tho shock, and the two trains stopped with the crunch of splintering woodwork and snapping steel. The passengers from both trains were naturally out of the cars within a few seconds, and a search was com- ' menced for the dead and the dying that seemed to be the natural outcome of such a collision. Happily none could bo found who could be placed in : either category. The driver of the train ! from Christchurch was pinned down by falling coal from the tender ,but was soon released and found to be suifering from nothing worse than a severe shock and a. few bruises. Xhe man who had been travelling in the second carriage on the same train had received painful cuts on the face, and the fireman whe had jumped out was bleeding profusely from the head. The other engine-dri-I ver and fireman were shaken and bruised, and one or two passengers wore bruised to some extent. The only death to be recorded was that of a horse, which had been travelling in a horsebox on the troop train and was killed , outright. ! When daylight arrived the extent, of the. damage became visible. The two engines were standing close together, their fronts smashed in with the force of the impacts l"he engine drawing the train from Christchurch had been tin worst sufferer, Its front bogie having been driven back on to the gear underneath the boiler, and the whole engine forced up in the front. The puffei of the engine was battered in curiou: fashion, the solid steel having been bent as though it were a piece of led. TJk tender behind the engine had bear, thrown up and partially on to the engine by a passenger carnage. The end of the carriage had been thrust un der the tender for a distance of six oi eight feet, and the car had been com pletely shattered. The heavy stee' girders connecting the bogies, and or which the car proper is built, hao. beer bent in zig-zag fashion by the pres sure of the car behind. . The girder: are made capable of bearing an enormous pressure of an "end-on" charac ter, and the' state of these girders plainly indictaed the tremendous force of the impact.: The roof had beet thrown away from the track in oni piece, and the woodwork and seats had been completely Smashed. The bogie. 1 were broken and twisted, and it woulc have hardly been possible for a car ti Rate been more completely shattered. It was evident that this car had taken the bulk of the shock, and to this fact that it telescoped so thoroughly must be attributed the comparatively safety of the other cars. The twe carriages behind the car had suffered only at their ends, which were considerably battered. The interior! and the frames generally were not injured to any obvious extent. On the other train the shock had been absorbed by a horse truck immediatelj behind the tender of the engine. The front of the engine was completely smashed in, showing the interior ano the front bogie was broken away and forced back to some extent. The bodj of the tender had been partially lifted from the truck, and the horse truck behind had been reduced to splinters, the next car, a seated waggon, coming almost up to the tender. The balance of the train was not injured. The horse truck contained two horses belonging to Colonel Mackenzie, the officer commanding the South Canterbury Battalion, and by some chance, quite came out almost uninjured. The horses had been tied to a ring in the roof of the horse-box by means of a piece of rope, and after the accident it was found alongside the track, still tied tc the splintered fragments of the roof. It had sustained a few scratches, but did not appear to be otherwise much the worse for its adventure. The other horse had its fleck broken, and its body was alongside the wreck • The engines were no longer symbols of power., of man's dominion over the forces of Nj*ure. They lay heavily, on the twisted rails , their fire-boxes black and cold, no hint of smoke or steam showing from funnel or pistons. The front of one, shorn of its cowcatcher and dismally dented and broken, was supported by a pile of sleepers. Its boiler scorned to have moved bodily forward on the truck, owing to the effort of the tender to get into the cab behind, and yet further back were the twisted and sattered remains of the telescoped carriage. The front of the other engine had beentorn out altogether, giving a glimpse of a cavernous interior. The front bogie was lying alongside the track, fractured points showing where it had broken away from the engine, and the tender had been tilted up behind the telescoped horse-box. All round were strewn fragments of wood and steel, splinters of glass, pieces of seats and cushions, and the various gear of the railway men. A little way off lay the stiff body of the dead horse, for the reception of which some workmen were digging a capacious grave in the rough shingle. The other portions of the colliding trains had been removed early in the morning.