TERRIBLE ACCIDENT on the GREAT INDIAN PENINSULA RAILWAY.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 49, 19 June 1869, Page 4

TERRIBLE ACCIDENT on the GREAT INDIAN PENINSULA RAILWAY.

The Bombay papers contain long accounts of a terrible accident on the Great Indian Peninsula Eailway, on the 26th January, an accident which is described as the least expected and most alarming ever recorded. The following condensed account of the calamity is from the Times of India, of the 30fch ultimo : The through passenger-train from Sholapore left Poona on the night of the 25th January, at eleven o'clock, and reached Lanowlee at one o'clock on the morning of the 26th. Here, as is always done, one of the powerful ghaut engines was attached, as also four ghaut brake vans, that number representing more than the amount of force believed to be necessary to control the speed of the train on tho steepest inclines. AH went well till Khandalla was reached j the driver had, however, found the train " somewhat unmanageable," that is to say, he experienced some difficulty in regulating its speed. Before starting again, therefore, additional precautions were adopted, as tho section of the Bhoro G-haut between Khandalla and the reversing station is the steepest and most perilous portion of it. Several wheels were " spragged " and a start made. Hardly had the train left the station when its speed began to be accelerated every moment, defying every exertion of driver, guard, and brakesman combined to stop it. These men foresaw the danger that was unavoidable ; unless the speed of tho train was arrested aud that instantly, it must dash over the embankment at the end of the reversing station. The driver therefore reversed the engine, putting the handle " hard over;" but to no purpose. Seeing that nothing further they could do would bo of any avail, the driver and guard jumped off, and the ill-fated train flew into and over the embankment, at tho rate, it is said, of sixty miles an hour. Sixteen passengers were killed, all natives. The most disquieting consideration is, that it might apparently happen any night ; indeed, one wonders that ifc should not have been a weekly occurrence. The Coroner's jury declare ifc to have been caused solely by the slipperiness of the rails, owing to the heavy dew. With this neither the Government nor the public can possibly rest satisfied. The safety of valuable lives must not be allowed to depend on a little dew, more or less ; and a most searching investigation has been ordered by Government. The mere fact that the killed were natives, mostly coolies and lascars, will not be allowed to make the investigation less thorough than it should bo ; for valuable lives are constantly exposed to precisely the same risk as were those in the train of" the 25th instant. Heavy dews fall on the Q-hauts every night during eight months of the year; and some means must be found for rendering railway travelling on dewy nights safer than it haß hitherto been, or travellers must be distinctly advised of tho terrible risk they might run. The result of the investigation ordered by Government will be awaited with the greatest interest.

The Niagara Falls.— The San Francisco News Letter says :—": — " A speedy and mighty change in the character of the great Niagara Falls is looked for. It has lone been known that, beneath the hard limestone shelf over which the vast body of water passes, there is a Boffc stratum of shale. The long wearing away of the limestone gave a long lease of existence to the Falls, but the lease is now threatened with a sudden termination, by the certain indications in the currents about 800 yards above the Canadian Falls, which show that the water has got at the sublying shale, and is rapidly eating it away. It has even been ascertained that a subterranean stream of water is now pouring into tho gulf below the Falls, aud everything goes to prove that the great limestone shelf, known as the ' Horseshoe,' will soon be complotely undermined and destroj'ed. Two effects are anticipated from this — a conversion of the Falls into a rapid, thereby rendering the 'shooting of Niagara' practicable, and, secondly, the diverting of the entire body of water to the Canadian side, the United States being thus robbed of their share of the mighty cataract by the Britishers."