TRAINS IN COLLISION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23970, 20 November 1939, Page 7

TRAINS IN COLLISION

SIXTEEN PERSONS INJURED CONFUSION IN THE DARKNESS (From Our Own Correspondent) * SYDNEY, Nov. 8. Sixteen persons were injured, three seriously, when one picnic train crashed into the rear of a second picnic train, which had halted 10 miles from Newcastle. The trains, carrying 700 passengers, were returning from a railway workshops Labour Day picnic. The leading train had halted for the Hexham signal, and was beginning to move again when the following train, travelling at 20 miles an nour, smashed into it. The baggage van of the first train was telescoped and the carnage immediately before it was smashed. There were only four peole in this carriage. None of these was seriously injured. The leading carriage of the second train, holding 30 people, was telescoped. The fact that the first train had begun to move forward lessened the collision. The accident happened at 6.40 p.m., and confusion m the darkness followed. George Aggett saved the life of a 12-year-old boy when he dived through the window of the first train and picked the boy up from beneath the wheels of an oncoming coal train on another line. The boy. Jack Smith, was standing on the rear platform of the train looking at the following train, which was carrying his mother and brothers. When the crash occurred he started to walk along the permanent way on the up-line wheie a coal train was approaching. Mrs George Aggett saw him and screamed to her husband, who dived through the window and rescued the boy. “ I felt the wind of the train passing as I held the boy in my arms,” he said. Mrs Edna Arms who was injured, said that the force of the impact threw her out of her seat. “ I don’t know anything (hat happened after the first couple of bumps,” she said. “I hit my head on something. There were people sprawling all oyer the place. Nobody seemed to be injured much, but they were all badly shocked.” Newcastle Ambulance rushed six ambulance cars to (he scene. In darkness relieved only by a few torches, the injured were carried or helped along the railway line and rushed to hospital. Railway officials thought that the accident was the result of a_ misapprehension of signals. They said that the first train had waited for the signal to clear at Hexham Crossing before going on. The second train came upon it too late to stop.