KEEPSAKES FROM THE DEAD

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12558, 22 September 1926, Page 7

KEEPSAKES FROM THE DEAD

In one corner of a little room at the Murrurundi station lies a tangled heap. There are the broad boots of men. There are the dainty shoes of suede and velvet of women. There are the •white tennis shoes of schoolgirls. A boneless jumble of footwear. Tucked in shelves around the walla M a confusion of hats. Felt hats smeared with dust and blood. Small hats of pink and blue and green, crushed and twisted, and here and there stained with a darker red. The owners of all these hats and boots are either dead or struggling for life in one of the three hospitals or hastening to increase the distance between themselves and Murulla gorge, which local people are naming the Valley of Death. Round the floor are battered novels. Dust smeared pieces of music that belonged mostly to the schoolgirls are piled in one'corner. There is a sinister crimson stain on ►‘Woodland Whispers.” There is another stain on the Strangely significant waltz, “After the Dawn Breaks.” Women’s handbags lie on the floor. Snapshots and photographs dedicated all “With love” to someone strew the littered fireplace shelf. Manv of them are stained bv the blood of those who were treasuring them. Fruit and boxes of chocolates crushed to pulp tell of the travelling lunches of the schoolgirls. It is a room of searing memories, memories of the "greatest tragedy that has ever stained the whole north-west. Into this room come few people. Only very little property has been claimed. Relatives of the injured are yet too ■hocked to worry over luggage. Many of the articles belonged to the dead. One or two women flushed from weeping. have stepped in among this aftermath of the tragedy. Shudders have shaken them because blood stains many of the little personal treasures. They have claimed little things, chiefly

as memories or relics of their dead cmes.

Cp at the Murrurundi Hospital, which is on a scarp of the ranges high above the town, doctors and nurses are still fighting hard to save some of the victims of the disaster. Their work has been magnificent. The ptwsing of hours has meant nothing. Fatigue has been fought and beaten. Much anxiety is felt at the fact that some of the battered train passengers have possible severe spine injuries. The nearest X-ray plant is in West Maitland, and that has added to the enormous difficulty that the medical men had to face. Nurses, working heroically, have changed the chaos into the order that comes of white beds in large, welllighted wards. All the eighteen patients were reported to-day as being “doing comfortably.” One has been taken to Newcastle for X-ray examination of bones. Sheep to-day grazed placidly on the hillsides that ring the Murulla Valley at the scene of the disaster. Down the line railway-men and police officers solemnly stepped distances.. They finally decided that in their mad dash the trucks had gone 1200 yards before they hit the mail. It is conclusive now, too, that the trucks began their downhill holt from the main line, and did not swing from the loop lino in their rush towards the mail train. It has also been established that two trains passed that line of trucks while the first break in the hook was being repaired. Passengers on another and luckier train saw those trucks which to others were to form a terrible battering ram of death. Splintered wreckage lies about the line to-day, hut the under carriage of the ill-fated coach had been towed into Murrurundi. After most of the wreckage had been moved from the tracks the breakdown gang found part of the head of a small child. One of the men tripped and nearly fell over it-