TRAIN CRASH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24525, 6 February 1941, Page 8

TRAIN CRASH

PASSENGERS TRAPPED FIVE HOURS’ ORDEAL By Tasman Air Mail SYDNEY, Jan. 29. Five of 12 people injured when the Thallon mail train crashed into a landslide five miles from Toowoomba, South-Western Queensland. were pinned in the wreckage for five hours. Mrs Clara Ibell, 34, the mother of three children, two of whom were also injured, died a few hours later. The train was wrecked at 11 p.m. last Sunday in a tunnel, but a rescue train did not arrive until 2.35 a.m. All that time in the darkness of the tunnel the uninjured passengers stood by unable to help listening to the moans of those trapped in the first two carriages. Screaming women climbed over the wreckage looking for children lost in the confusion, of the crash. The train was travelling 20 miles an hour when the crash occurred. The engine had just cleared the tunnel mouth when it crashed into a landslide of hundreds of tons of soil and rock piled up over the track. The second carriage of the train was forced half-way into the first. The two carriages were buckled against the wall, of the tunnel. Five passengers travelling in the forward compartments of the second carriage were buried in the debris. Seven other passengers in the rear of the same carriage were injured. The engine river ran two miles to a signal box, where he telephoned to Toowoomba for help. It took two hours to arrange for a rescue train. When it arrived, men set to work in the light of oil and acetylene lamps to cut through the debris with hacksaws and blow 4 torches. The first passenger was released at 4 a.m. Two men, pinned against the chassis of the first carriage suffered intense agony as a doctor and ambulance bearers made desperate efforts to lift the weight off them. One had his head jammed between two seats upon which rested the full weight of the wrecked carriage, while the other had his right leg and left foot wedged fast in heavy ironwork. Miss Matilda Muller said she was imprisoned in the wreckage for three hours. She could move her head omy a few inches. “ I was quiet for a bit,” she said, “but when I heard others screaming and moaning I screamed too. Quite close to me I heard Mrs Ibell (who died later in hospital telling her three children to sit quietly.”