TRAIN SMASH

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 10 January 1929, Page 5

TRAIN SMASH

SCOTTISH EXPRESS COLLIDES

KILLED AND INJURED

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Australian Press Association—United Service)

LONDON, 9th January. Two coaches of the London, Midland and Scottish Company’s north-bound Bristol-Nottingham jnail train overturned through collision with a goods train at Ashchurch, Gloucestershire. The driver of the express was killed and four passengers were seriously and elevon slightly injured. The express, engine was derailed with a number of coaches, blocking both lines. Ambulances were rushed 20 miles from Gloucester to the scene of the accident which occurred in foggy weather within twenty miles of Charfield, where fifteen were killed and thirty injured in a similar collision on the same company's lino on 13th October.

Huge bonfires from the wrecked coaches were lighted to enable parties of doctors and nurses to carry out rescue work in the dense fog and darkness. Three bodies of passengers were discovered amid a tangled mass of woodwork, bringing the death roll to four. Apparently the express cut clean through a goods’ train which’ was shunting across the track. The carriages were electrically lighted, and fortunately did nob catch fire. The lights in some of the overturned coaches remained burning, assisting rescuers.

One passenger lay for hours under the wreckage until a rail crane raised the truck from his crushed foot.

Owing to the shortage of ambulances at Cheltenham, the police commandeered motor ’buses to convey the injured long distances to hospital.