A TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9320, 25 March 1889, Page 5

A TERRIBLE RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

A terrible railway accident, attended by very serious loss of life, occurred on the morning of the 3rd instant, on the lino between Brussels and Luxemburg, close to a small station called Gronendael, about 15 minutes' run from Brussels. The train, which left Brussels for Namur at half-past nine o'clock, ran off the rails, and dashed itself with terrific violence against the pillar of a footbridge which there crosses the line, oversetting the pillar and bringing down the bridge on to the top of the forepart of the train. The wreck presented an appalling spectacle. The violence of the shock caused the engine, tender, luggage-van, and the first four carriages of v.fie train to rebound. They were literally smashed to atoms. Even the iron framework of the doors was bent and twisted in such a manner that the sur-

vivors were obliged to escape as they could by the windows. The train was, as usual on Sundays, crowded, and the ground was strewn with dead and dying. Men and women who in the first shock thought they had escaped, found, upon trying to escape, that they were more or less imprisoned in the wreck, and added their cries to the groans of the dying. Many of them had their legs and feet cut off The enginedriver's body lay headless, One man who escaped saw his affianced bride Trilled by his side. An officer of the Marine was among the killed. Among the wounded >"n the hospitals is a little girl of five years, who was so mutilated that it was impossible to identify her. She was not; expected to live many hours; all she did being to cry, "Papa!" "Mamma!" No fewer than 14 persons were taken out dead from the wreckage of the carriages, and as many as 50 injured, several of them mortally. Dr. Hauben, who was travelling by the train, jumped from his carriage at the first shock. Upon reaching the ground and finding himself uninjured he commenced to dance with joy, among the mass of injured persons round him. The moment of temporary folly soon passed, however, and he immediately set about doing his best to alleviate the sufferings of his unfortunate travelling companions. Other persons who had been more or less injured thereby rushed frantically through the foreet of Soignies, and some of them reached Brussels with their clothes in tatters, and their hair dishevelled. Help came at once from the officials and people in the neighbourhood of Gronendael, and as soon as the news of the catastrophe reached Brussels a relief train with a number of doctors and persons in authority was despatched to the scene. At the Hospital of St. Jean alone eight amputations were made. Almost all the sufferers were injured in the legs.