A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 285, 22 March 1877, Page 4

A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

("Otago Guardian.") An accident, fortunately slight in itself, but which serves as an illustration of the imminent clanger to which travellers by rail are sometimes unwillingly exposed, occurred to the afternoon train from In* vercargill to Mataura on Monday. The train had left Tnvercargill wib'i a number of open trucks loaded with railway plant, and these were attached to the engine, the passenger carriages being hooked on be hind. At Edendale several additional trucks, loaded with railway sleepers for the Gore-Waipahee extension, were added to the train, and these also were placed in advance of the passenger carriages. There ■were thus eight or nine tracks immediately behind the engine, ard the risk incurred through such an arrangement will be apparent from what follows. When witfiin about three miles of Mataura Station tiie occupants of the train experienced a smart concussion, and the driver or guard immediately discovered that the Insliings of the sleepers had become loose, and that one of the large blocks of timber Lad slipped off and fallen down between two trucks, one end of the sleeper being on the rail and the other resting on the coupling gear. The engine was promptly stopped, when the guard and stoker rtplaced the loose sleepers upon the trucks, and the vigilance of the first-named official prevented any further mishap during the remainder of the trip. Most fortunately the rope used to fasten the sleepers did not bi'tak, or the consequences would have been disastrous indeed. The train had just reached the bottom of a long incline, and was running on a dead level—another providential circumstance. An occurrence of the kind above narrated should be the means of preventing for the future the dangerous practice of carrying sleepers and such like material otherwise than in what are technically called " box trucks," and should also tend to check the custom of allowing a number of trucks with insc cure loading to precede the carriages appropriated to the conveyance of passengers.