A TIMARU DISAPPEARANCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 28 September 1907, Page 3

A TIMARU DISAPPEARANCE.

ISSUE OF A WARRANT. [Ukited Press Association.] TIMARU, Saturday. A warralit han been issue dhere for the arrest of a professional man, who had been carrying ori business in Tiirtaru fo rthe past two years. The charge fs ode o fenib'ezztement: The iflan has disappeared.

A London CSrrcspondetit'. under dale August 9th writes :— Holiday noasons usually produce a crop of fatalities, and generally speaking a big train smash figures in fhe list. In England our August Bank Holiday period, which extends, for most people from the Friday night tb tlio. TtieSd.a* morning following, passed away, without , any disaster of any magnitude. Minor fatalities, chiefly drownings, were plentiful, but we, were singularly free from thos-) railwa? .accident* usually associated with periods when iforfflaf truth Services are thrown out of jo-nt to facili* tate holiday excursion traffic. In France the opening of the month of August has been marked by a series of fatal accidents, the worst being the railway disaster on the State line between Angsts. Slid Poit i**i*ft, on Sunday last. A train fell into the river Loirfe, and so far as can be ascertained at present, at least 50 souls lost their lives. The train was a slow one, and the passengers were nearly all labouring men employed at the great storte quarries around Angers, going for a Sunday outing with their wives and families. The, true cause of the accident remains in doubt, but it . is , thought th-j-t the catastrophe was due to the* breaknig 61 the iron bridge, which is a very long one, as the Loire is extremely wide at this -po.int. Whatever the cause, the horrible fact remains that the engine, tender, luggage van, and a. third-class coach crammed with passengers crashed through, the parapet and fell into ,15 ' feet of water. ; Happily the couplings between the third-class coach- apd "the rest of the train broke, and the remainder of the vehicles remained on the bridge. The stoker of the engine and the guard in the first luggage van luckily got clear of the wreck, and |S*^am ashore; but the engine-driver was caught under his locomotive and killed, and the passengers in the thirdclass coach which fell into the river were drowned. A fearful panic broke out among the passengers wno were in , the rear carriages, and feared to share ] the fate of those floundering and , drowning in the. water. Men. aiid . Women, . rah madly off the bridge, - sci'eaming, while the unfortunate people in the Loire cried wildly for help, which was speedily at hand in. the shape of a, crowd of villagers, aiid a company of sappers. But their efforts resulted in nqthing better that the re : covery of dead and mangled bodies, and not a soul in the carriage which fell . into the river escaped. The Union Company's new turbine steamer Maori, which met with an accident during a trial run on the Clyde last week, built for. the Wellington- • Lyttelton ferry service, w*j)l . have a speed of not less than 21 knots an houi*. This rate, if maintained throughout, would enable the vessel to make the passage froni Wellington to Lyttelton, or vice versa, in eight hours and a half, but she will hardly be forced constantly to full speed, and so a passage of nine hours in favourable weather and 10 under less . propitious conditions may ordinarily be looked fnr. The accommodation on tho new boat j will be superior to anything hitherto seen even in the Union Company's boats, which have no equal in this respect in any coastal steamers to be seen i on the coast of Britain or the European Continent. «