AMAZING ESCAPES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 28 (Supplement)

AMAZING ESCAPES

MAIL TRAIN DERAILED Fifty-eight passengers and train attendants had remarkable escapes when all the nine coaches of the 3.30 a.m. Northern Ireland mail train from Carlisle to Stranraer, on the Scottish coast, left the rails and crashed down a 15ft. embankment between Castle Douglas and New Galloway recently. Had the train left the rails a second earlier nothing could have saved it from plunging from a steel viaduct into the River Dee. Only three persons were in-

jured—a woman passenger and two sorting clerks working with the mails. The train was the through portion of the 8.30 p.m. from London, and connected with the Stranraer-Larne steamer service.

After the crash lanterns were lit near the smashed carriages, and in their eerie light men and women were pulled by railway officials from the wreckage Passengers banded themselves together and kept warm by sitting round bonfires made from the wreckage. One passenger was a musician who had a violin in his luggage and played "A Guid New Year."

Dining car attendants were praised by the passengers for their efforts to avoid a panic. They made tea, and this was served to the passengers as they sat beside the bonfires. A railway official told an interviewer: "With all my experience of trains, I would not have believed that such a wreck could have occurred without someone being killed." The train had two engines. The front one kept the rails; the other was partly derailed.