TRAIN’S NARROW ESCAPE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 26

TRAIN’S NARROW ESCAPE

DRIVER’S PROMPT ACTION I’roinpt action by an engine-driver probably saved many holiday makers from serious injury when a motor lorry came into collision with the engine of a train at a level crossing on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch light raihvaay at Dymehurch on September 2. The train driver, Claud Webb, of New Romney, stopped his engine in the path of the ‘oncoming lorry, and so prevented the five light coaches, whose passengers included women amf children, from being run into. The engine, weighing five tons, was overturned and came to rest on the edge of a wooden bridge which carries the railway across a .‘JO-foct stream. The coach next to the engine was badly damaged, and a passenger, Mr William Hardie, was bruised and cut by flying glass. The driver of the motor lorry, Sonny Mickleburg, of Bromley Green, was badly cut on the head and shoulders, and was suffering from contusions on the brain and shock. The lorry was wrecked. It hit the engine just in front of the driving cabin. Scalding steam escaped, and lire from the box fell on the wooden bridge, but the driver scrambled out, shut off steam, and put out the fire. The Romney, Hythe, and Dymchurch light railway, described as the smallest public railway in the world, runs across :i0 miles of Romney Marsh from Hythe to Dungeness and is popular with holiday makers.