FARMER'S TEETH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

FARMER'S TEETH.

TRAIN NEARLY WRECKED. PASSENGERS' PERIL. A farmer's broken teeth almost wrecked an express train on the Pennsylvania railway recently. The train, lurching and swaying for half a mile between Atco and Berlin, New Jersey, came to a. halt with its terrified passengers, lying in the aisles or hanging frantically to seats and staring at each other to see if they were really alive.

The train, which started from Philadelphia, arrived with its engine driver and 500 shaken riders telling a tale of one of the most astonishing accidents in railway history. Only a miracle, they said, saved them from catastrophe. The train, at Bishop's Bridge station, crosses the highway on a trestle about 14ft, above the road and follows an Bft. embankment across tho fields. Roaring along at a mile a minute, the engine and line of carriages and trucks reached tho road at 5 p.m. It suddenly jerked sharply, leaned far to the right and rocked to the left, the right trucks lifting clear of tho rails. The train, for half a mile, rocked from side to side while Fred Smythe, the engino driver, worked frantically to close down the throttle and bring it to a standstill.

The train, after 60 fearful seconds, stopped and Smythe, thinking he had hit ;i heavy object, backed to see tho cause. Ho found the tracks immediately over the road in two S-shaped curves, running from 6in. to Bin. off the line. He could not say how tho trucks managed to pass the mangled rails. An investigation showed that earlier in the afternoon a farmer, driving a heavilyladen truck, crashed tho top of his vehicle into the trestle, dislodging some of the ties and bending tho rails forward with them.

Tho impact threw, his head against the steering wheel, knocking out most of his teeth. So concerned was he about his teeth that he notified no one about the crash, but hastened immediately to the nearest dentist.

Mr. Smythe telephoned the station in Philadelphia to flag other trains and to rush out a repair crew.